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The human zoo (also known as "ethnological exposition", "human exhibition" and "Negro village") is a public display in the past of humans in a so-called "natural" or "primitive" state.
These displays wrongly emphasize the supposed inferiority of the culture on display and imply the superiority of "Western society" by portraying marginalized groups as "savages." The idea of a "savager" took hold at the time of Columbus, with European culture considered pure while other cultures were labeled impure or "savage." This stereotype is largely based on the assumption that many ways of life are "rejected by God" because these cultures do not recognize Christianity regarding Creation.
Throughout their existence, such exhibitions have sparked controversy regarding their humiliating, dismissive and dehumanizing nature. They began as part of circuses and "freak shows" that displayed exotic people in a cartoon-like manner, exaggerating their differences. They then became independent exhibitions, emphasizing the inferiority of human exhibits to Western culture and providing further justification for their subjugation. Such displays have been presented at numerous world fairs and at temporary exhibitions in animal zoos.
In the Western Hemisphere, one of the earliest known zoos, that of Moctezuma in Mexico, consisted not only of a vast collection of animals but also exhibited humans, such as dwarfs, albinos, etc.
During the Renaissance, the Medici established a large menagerie in the Vatican. In the 16th century, Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici had a collection of people of different races as well as exotic animals. He is reported to have had a band of so-called savages speaking over twenty languages; there were also Moors, Tartars, Indians, Turks and Africans.
In 1691, Englishman William Dampier exhibited a tattooed native from the Indonesian island of Miangas that he had bought while on the island of Mindanao, Philippines. He intended to expose also the man's mother in order to gain more profit, but she died at sea. The man was called Gioli, falsely branded as "Prince Giolo" to attract more audiences, and was exposed for three months dying of smallpox in London.
One of the first modern public exhibitions of people was the exhibition of the American businessman, showman and politician R. T. Barnum, in which on February 25, 1835, the African American slave Joyce Hatt was displayed, with the false claim that she was the wet nurse of George Washington and was 161 years old. Conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker were similarly subsequently shown at the Marnham exhibition. These exhibitions were a common occurrence in so-called freak shows.
Another famous example is that of Saarti Baartman of the Nama African ethnic group, often called the Hottentot Venus, who was exhibited in London and France until her death in 1815.
In 1850, Maximo and Bartola, two children with cyclocephaly, natives of El Salvador, were exhibited in the United States and Europe under the names Aztec Children and Aztec Midgets. However, human zoos did not become commonplace until the 1870s.
In 1870, exhibitions of so-called "exotic populations" became popular throughout the Western world. Human zoos could be seen in many of the largest cities in Europe, such as Paris, Hamburg, London and Milan, as well as in American cities such as New York and Chicago.
Karl Hagenbeck, a German animal trader, was one of the early supporters of this trend when in 1874, at the suggestion of the German artist and illustrator Heinrich Leutemann, he decided to show Sami people at the "Lapland Exhibition". What sets Hagenbeck's exhibition apart from others is the fact that he shows these people, with animals and plants, to 'recreate' their 'natural environment'. The exhibits had a huge success and were getting bigger and more complex.
Hagenbeck held a Nubian Exhibition in 1876 and an Inuit Exhibition in 1880. These were also hugely successful.
The Jardin d'Acclimatization amusement park in Paris was also a famous place for ethnological exhibits. Geoffrey de Saint-Hilaire, director of the Jardin d'Acclimatation, decided in 1877 to organize two ethnological exhibitions that as in Hagenbeck’s case featured Nubians and Inuit. In the same year, visitors to the Jardin d'Acclimatation doubled to one million people. Between 1877 and 1912, about thirty ethnological exhibitions were presented in the Jardin d'Acclimatation park.
These exhibitions were so successful that they were included in both the World Exhibition in Paris in 1878 and in 1889, where a "negro village" was presented. The 1889 World's Fair, attended by 28 million people, featured 400 local people as an attraction.
In Amsterdam, at the International Colonial and Export Exhibition in 1883, Surinamese people were shown.
In 1886, the Spanish displayed the natives of the Philippines in an exhibition of people they had "civilized." By 1887, the local Igorot people and animals were sent to Madrid and exhibited in a human zoo in the newly built Crystal Palace. At the 1895 African Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, some eighty people from Somalia were shown in an "exotic" setting.
In Germany, the study of ethnology took a new approach in the 1870s, when human exhibits were incorporated into zoological gardens. The exhibits were praised as "educational" for the public by the scientific community. Very quickly the exhibits were used as a way to show that Europeans had "evolved" to a "superior", "cosmopolitan" life.
At the end of the 19th century, German ethnographic museums were considered pools for empirical studies of human culture. They contained artifacts from cultures around the world, organized by continent, which has allowed visitors to see similarities and differences between groups and "form their own ideas".
Throughout the history of human zoos, there were patterns of overt sexual display, most often of women. An example of the sexualization of ethnically diverse women in Europe is Saarti Baartman, often referred to by her English name Sarah Baartman.
Bartmann was exhibited during her lifetime in England and Ireland, and after her death, her body was displayed in the Musée de la Manne in Paris. While alive, she performed in a traveling show that portrayed her as a "wild woman" with a heavy emphasis on her body. The clothes she was dressed in were tight and close to her skin color, and viewers were encouraged to "see for themselves" if Bartman's body, especially her rear, is real by "poking and prodding."
While women are most often objectified, there are a few instances of "exotic" men being shown due to their favorable appearance. Angelo Soliman was brought to Italy as a slave from Central Africa in the 18th century, but eventually gained a reputation in Vienna society for his martial skills and vast knowledge of language and history. After his death in 1796, this positive association did not prevent his body from being "embalmed and exhibited in the Vienna Museum of Natural History" for almost a decade.
In 1896, to increase the number of visitors, the Cincinnati Zoo invited one hundred Sioux Indians to create a village on this site. The Sioux lived for three months in the zoo.
The World's Fair of 1900 featured the famous diorama (scale model) recreating a habitat in Madagascar, while the colonial exhibitions in Marseille (1906 and 1922) and in Paris (1907 and 1931) also showed people in cages, often naked or half-naked. The 1931 Exposition in Paris was so successful that 34 million people visited it in six months, while ironically a smaller counter-exhibition entitled The Truth About the Colonies, organized by the Communist Party, attracted very few visitors.
At the human zoos of the early 20th century, the indigenous people on display faced a number of challenges. African tribal members were required to wear traditional clothing intended for the equatorial heat, even in freezing December temperatures, and Filipino villagers were made to perform a seasonal dog-eating ritual over and over to shock the audience. A lack of drinking water and appalling sanitary conditions led to rampant dysentery and other illnesses.
In most cases, there were no bars to keep those in human zoos from escaping, but the vast majority, especially those brought from foreign continents, had nowhere else to go. Set up in mock “ethnic villages,” indigenous people were asked to perform typical daily tasks, show off “primitive” skills like making stone tools, and pantomime rituals. In some shows, indigenous performers engaged in fake battles or tests of strength.
In 1906, Madison Grant - a social personality, eugenicist, amateur anthropologist and head of the New York Zoological Society - imposed an idea of his own - the Congolese pygmy Ota Benga to be exhibited in the Bronx Zoo in New York along with monkeys and other animals. At Grant's behest, zoo director William Hornaday caged Benga with the chimpanzees, then an orangutan named Dohong, and a parrot, calling him the Missing Link, an unscientific term that suggests that, in evolutionary terms, Africans like Benga are closer to apes than Europeans. This provoked protests from the clergy of the city, but despite of this, the flocks were coming to see Benga.
On Monday 8 September 1906, after only two days, Hornaday decided to close the exhibition and Benga could be seen walking around the grounds of the zoo, often followed by a crowd who "whooped, jeered and shouted".
According to the New York Times, some people objected to the sight of a human being in a cage with monkeys as companions. Controversy erupted as the town's black priests took offense. "We think our race is depressed enough without showing one of us with the monkeys," says the Reverend James H. Gordon, superintendent of the Howard Asylum for Colored Orphans in Brooklyn. "We think we deserve to be seen as human beings with souls."
New York City Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. refused to meet with the clergy, earning praise from Hornaday, who wrote him, "When the history of the zoo is written, this incident will be the most amusing excerpt."
In 1903, one of the first widely publicized protests against human zoos took place, in the "Human Pavilion" at an exhibition in Osaka, Japan. An exhibition of Koreans and residents of the Japanese island of Okinawa in "primitive" dwellings has sparked protests from the Korean and Okinawan governments, and a Taiwanese woman dressed in Chinese dress has angered a group of Chinese students in Tokyo. Besides, a teacher of Ainu descent - Japan's largest ethnic minority - has been forced to perform alone at a zoo to raise money for his school because the Japanese government has been refusing to support the school. The fact that the teacher gave eloquent speeches and raised funds, dressed in folk costumes, disturbed the viewers. An anonymous front-page column in a Japanese magazine condemned these examples and the "Human Pavilion" in general, deeming it inhumane for humans to be exhibited as spectacles.
In 1904, over 1,100 Filipinos were displayed at the St. Louis World's Fair in conjunction with the 1904 Summer Olympics. After the Spanish-American War, the United States had just acquired new territories such as Guam in the Philippines and Puerto Rico. William H. Taft (US President from 1909 to 1913) was the civilian governor of the Philippines at the time and allowed the US to organize an exhibition in the Philippines in an attempt to "show off the new colony."
The Filipinos were housed in villages known to the visitors as "Igorote Village", despite the diversity of ethnic groups represented. Although the exhibit was promoted as a demonstration of US power and growth, the Filipinos themselves were interpreted as "racially inferior and incapable of national self-determination in the near future." This was done by encouraging the performances of tribal customs that were considered strange and 'wild', such as eating a dog.
Between 1 May and 31 October 1908, Southon Park, Edinburgh hosted the Scottish National Exhibition, opened by one of Queen Victoria's grandsons, Prince Arthur of Connacht. One of the attractions was the Senegalese village with its French-speaking Senegalese residents demonstrating their lifestyle, arts and crafts while living in beehive-like huts.
In 1909, the infrastructure of the 1908 Scottish National Exhibition in Edinburgh was used to build the new sea gardens near Edinburgh at Portobello. A group of Somali men, women and children were sent to the exhibition where they lived in thatched huts.
In 1925, an exhibit at Belle Vue Zoological Gardens in Manchester, England, was titled "Cannibals" and featured black Africans in supposedly native dresses.
In the 1930s, a new kind of human zoo emerged in America, in which nude shows were masquerading as educational programs. These included the Zorro Garden Nudist Colony at the Pacific Exposition in San Diego, California (1935–36) and the Sally Rand Nude Ranch at the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco (1939). Supposedly, the first show used hired performers instead of real nudists.
The World Exhibition in Portugal in 1940, featured members of a tribe from the Bissagos Islands in Guinea-Bissau, displayed on an island in a lake in the Tropical Botanical Garden in Lisbon.
A Congolese village was displayed at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.
In April 1994, an example of an Ivorian village was featured as part of an African safari at Port-Saint-Pierre, near Nantes, France, later named Planet Savage.
In July 2005, the Augsburg Zoo in Germany hosted an "African Village" featuring African crafts and African cultural performances. The event has been widely criticized. Defenders of the event argued that it was not racist because it did not involve exposing Africans in a degrading manner, as was done in zoos in the past. Critics argued that the representation of African culture in the zoo context contributed to its highlighting as exotic and stereotyping of Africans, thereby laying the groundwork for racial discrimination.
In the years leading up to World War II and beyond, the public’s time and attention was drawn away from frivolity and toward geopolitical conflict and economic collapse.
By the middle of the 20th century, television replaced circuses and traveling “zoos” — human or otherwise — as the preferred mode of entertainment, and the display of indigenous people for entertainment fell out of fashion.
Even so, in August 2005, London Zoo displayed four human volunteers dressed in fig leaves (and bathing suits) for four days.
In 2007, the Adelaide Zoo in Australia held the Human Zoo exhibit, which consisted of a group of some people, as part of a learning exercise. They were housed in the former monkey enclosure during the day but returned home at night. The volunteers took part in several exercises and the spectators were asked to make donations aimed at building a new enclosure for the monkeys.
In 2007, pygmy performers at the Festival of Pan-African Music (Fespam) were housed in a zoo in Brazzaville, Congo. Although the members of the 20-strong group (among them a three-month-old baby) have not been officially put on display, they were required to collect wood at the zoo to cook their food, and have been observed and photographed by tourists and passers-by .
In 2012, a video surfaced showing a safari trip to the Bay of Bengal. The safari included an introduction to the Jarawa tribe of the Andaman Islands in their own home. This local tribe did not have much contact with outsiders and some were asked to perform dances for tourists. At the beginning of the safari trip, there were signs indicating not to "feed" the tribesmen, but the tourists still brought food to give to the tribesmen. In 2013, the Supreme Court of India banned these safari trips.
The threatening, exploitative and degrading practice of 'human safari' tourism is a major problem, especially for indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation, such as the Sentinelese - the indigenous people of North Sentinel, an island in the Andaman Archipelago located in the Bay of Bengal. They refuse contact with the outside world and are perhaps the only people who remain untouched and unaffected by modern civilization
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