Human zoo

Human zoos, also known as ethnological expositions, was a colonial practice of publicly displaying people, usually in a so-called "natural" or "primitive" state. They were most prominent during the 19th and 20th centuries. These displays often emphasized the supposed inferiority of the exhibits' culture, and implied the superiority of "Western society", through tropes that depicted marginalized groups as "savage". They then developed into independent displays emphasizing the exhibits' inferiority to western culture and providing further justification for their subjugation. Such displays featured in multiple colonial exhibitions and at temporary exhibitions in animal zoos.

Etymology The term "human zoo" was not generally used by contemporaries of the shows, and was popularised by the French researcher Pascal Blanchard. The term has been criticised for denying the agency of the shows' non-European performers. According to Sandra Koutsoukos, the term "human zoos" was likely coined by French historians and anthropologists and first appeared in a 2002 publication. It is widely used in academia to critique the inhumanity and racism of events that displayed people from cultures deemed "exotic" or "savage".

Early precedents Public displays of people predated the ethnological exhibitions that became common during the nineteenth century. One of the earliest recorded examples was the zoo of Moctezuma in central Mexico, which contained not only a large collection of animals but also people, including dwarfs, albinos and hunchbacks. During the Renaissance, the Medici family maintained large menageries in Italy. In the 16th century, Cardinal Hippolytus Medici reportedly kept people from many different backgrounds alongside exotic animals, including individuals described as "Savages", as well as Moors, Tartars, Indians, Turks and Africans. In 1691, Jeoly, a tattooed man from Miangas, was purchased by the English explorer William Dampier while he was in Mindanao and exhibited in London. Dampier also intended to exhibit Jeoly's mother, but she died at sea before reaching England. Jeoly was marketed as "Prince Giolo" and remained on display for three months before dying of smallpox. One of the first modern public human exhibitions was P. T. Barnum's exhibition of Joice Heth on 25 February 1835, followed by exhibitions of Chang and Eng Bunker, the conjoined twins later known as the Siamese twins. Such exhibitions were common in circuses and freak shows. Saartjie Baartman, of the Nama people, was exhibited in Britain and France under the name "Hottentot Venus" until her death in 1815. During the 1850s, Maximo and Bartola, two microcephalic siblings from El Salvador, were exhibited in Europe and the United States under the names "Aztec Children" and "Aztec Lilliputians". Human zoos became common during the 1870s, in the period of New Imperialism.

Expansion of ethnological exhibitions During the 1870s, public displays of individual people increasingly gave way to larger ethnological exhibitions featuring communities and groups of people. As European colonial empires expanded, these exhibitions became increasingly common across Europe and North America. Organizers promoted them as educational or scientific displays, but they often portrayed Indigenous peoples and other colonized groups as representatives of supposedly "primitive" cultures. One of the leading promoters of this new style of exhibition was German animal trader Carl Hagenbeck. In 1874, at the suggestion of German painter and illustrator Heinrich Leutemann, he organized an exhibition of Sámi people that differed from earlier displays by recreating what organizers presented as their "natural environment". People were exhibited alongside animals, plants, and reconstructed buildings intended to resemble their homelands, creating the impression that visitors were encountering distant cultures firsthand. Hagenbeck later organized exhibitions featuring Nubians in 1876 and Inuit in 1880. During the following decades, ethnological exhibitions became a regular feature of zoological gardens, colonial exhibitions, and world's fairs across Europe and North America. At the Jardin d'Acclimatation, a zoological garden in Paris, exhibitions featuring Nubian and Inuit began in 1877 and attracted large audiences. Between 1877 and 1912, approximately thirty ethnological exhibitions were presented there. By the end of the 19th century, human zoos had become a common feature of world's fairs, colonial exhibitions, and zoological gardens throughout Europe and North America.

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