Human zoos, also known as ethnological expositions, was a practice of publicly displaying people. In some cases these displays were voluntary on the part of people who willingly agreed, while in other cases the people were displayed without their consent.
Such practices have been found in cultures worldwide, dating back to at least the 1500s. The practice was popular in the 1900s and early 20th Century. In many of these cases, those displayed were typically of indigenous people, and the exhibits were often linked to colonialism and imperialism. These displays often emphasized the supposed inferiority of the exhibits' culture, and implied the superiority of Western civilization, Imperial Japan, and other ruling powers through tropes that depicted marginalized groups as savage or primitive. and provided justification for continued subjugation of these populations. Such displays featured in multiple colonial exhibitions and at temporary exhibitions in animal zoos. Such displays were controversial at the time, with protestors describing them as degrading and some organizers being forced to end the human exhibits due to maltreatment.
Etymology The term "human zoo" was not generally used by contemporaries of the shows, and was popularized by the French researcher Pascal Blanchard. The term has been criticized 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. The term is widely used in academia to critique such events as offensive, racist and degrading.
Early precedents Public displays of people predated the ethnological exhibitions that became common during the nineteenth century.Mullan, Bob, and Garry Marvin. Zoo Culture: The Book About Watching People Watch Animals. 2nd ed. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1998, p. 32.
One of the earliest recorded examples was the zoo of Moctezuma in central Mexico in the 1500s, 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.Mullan, Bob, and Garry Marvin. Zoo Culture: The Book About Watching People Watch Animals. 2nd ed. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1998, pp. 32, 98.
The Ottoman Empire had a tradition of using dwarves and other people with unusual attributes as companions or jesters, at least by the 16th and 17th Centuries. These people were not displayed for the public, but were held in a form of forced servitude in part due to their appearance.Dikici, Ayşe Ezgi (2006) Imperfect bodies perfect companions?: dwarfs and mutes at the Ottoman court in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. [Thesis]
In 1691, Jeoly, a tattooed man from Miangas in modern-day Indonesia, was purchased by the English explorer William Dampier while he was in Mindanao (modern-day Philippines) 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.Mangubat, L. "The True Story of the Mindanaoan Slave Whose Skin Was Displayed at Oxford." Esquire, 2017.
One of the first modern public human exhibitions was P. T. Barnum's exhibition of Joice Heth on 25 February 1835, who was falsely claimed as a nursemaid for George Washington. Barnum followed this with exhibitions of Chang and Eng Bunker, the conjoined twins later known as the Siamese twins. Such exhibitions were common in circuses and freak shows.Jonassohn, Kurt. "On A Neglected Aspect Of Western Racism." Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, December 2000. 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.Roberto Aguirre. Informal Empire: Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 2004, chapter 4.
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.
Gender and objectification
Modern scholars have noted how these exhibits often reduced people to racial, cultural, or physical types for observation and study. Women were frequently sexualized, while both women and men were photographed, classified, examined, or displayed in ways that emphasized perceived difference and exoticism.
One of the best-known examples is Saartjie Baartman, the African woman often referred to as the "Hottentot Venus". During the early 19th century, Baartman was exhibited in Britain and France, where promoters emphasized her body and portrayed her as a curiosity. Visitors were encouraged to inspect and touch her, particularly her buttocks, which were presented as evidence of supposed physical difference. After her death in 1815, her remains were dissected and displayed at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris without her consent.
Historian Dominika Czarnecka argues the popularity of ethnographic exhibitions often depended on the sexualization of non-European women. Writing about exhibitions in late 19th-century Poland, she notes that women were often dressed in revealing costumes which reflected European expectations and fantasies rather than the clothing of the cultures they were claimed to represent. Although some examples were depicted as Amazon warriors, contemporary accounts frequently focused on their appearance and clothing.
At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901, the belly dancer Little Egypt was photographed as a catalogued "type" by Charles Dudley Arnold and Harlow Higinbotham.Anne Maxwell, "Montrer l'Autre: Franz Boas et les soeurs Gerhard", in Zoos humains. De la Vénus hottentote aux reality shows, Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boëtsch, Eric Deroo, Sandrine Lemaire, eds., La Découverte, 2002, pp. 331–339, especially p. 333.
By the 1930s, a new form of human exhibition appeared in the United States as nude shows presented as educational exhibits. At the Zoro Garden Nudist Colony at the Pacific International Exposition in San Diego, California (1935–1936), hired performers portrayed members of a nudist colony rather than actual nudists. At the Sally Rand Nude Ranch at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco (1939), women appeared wearing cowboy hats, gunbelts, and boots, with little other clothing. The exposition also featured a "Greenwich Village" show, described in the official guidebook as a "Model artists' colony and revue theatre".
People could also be exhibited after death. Angelo Soliman, a man of Central African origin who became a prominent figure in Viennese society, was displayed after his death. His preserved body was exhibited in Vienna as an ethnographic specimen.
Scientific racism
Human zoos were closely associated with scientific racism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Exhibitions were often presented as educational or scientific displays and were used to classify human populations according to perceived levels of cultural and biological development.
Many exhibitions portrayed non-European peoples as living examples of an earlier stage of human development. Such displays supported imperialist narratives and were used to justify the subjugation of colonized peoples.
In Germany, ethnological exhibitions and museums were promoted as educational institutions. Human displays were incorporated into zoological and anthropological exhibits, where visitors were encouraged to compare different cultures and societies. By the late 19th century, some exhibitions presented human groups as occupying different positions on an evolutionary scale, with Western Europeans portrayed as the most advanced.
Human zoos at international expositions and world's fairs were often used to demonstrate contemporary ideas about race, civilization, and human progress such as happened at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Associated events such as "Anthropology Days" compared participants through athletic competitions that organizers linked to contemporary ideas about race, civilization, and human progress.Parezo, Nancy J., ed. Anthropology Goes to the Fair: The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. University of Nebraska Press, 2008.Brownell, Susan, ed. The 1904 Anthropology Days and Olympic Games: Sport, Race, and American Imperialism. University of Nebraska Press, 2008.
Human zoos at world's fairs and international exhibitions
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, world's fairs, colonial exhibitions, and other international events helped popularize human zoos in Europe and North America. Many were organized by imperial powers and featured people brought from their colonies. Participants were often housed in reconstructed villages and displayed performing daily activities for visitors.
By the late 19th century, human displays had become a common feature of major international exhibitions. At the 1889 Paris World's Fair, approximately 400 Indigenous people were displayed in a "Negro Village", one of the exposition's most popular attractions. Visited by 28 million people, the fair exposed large audiences to staged representations of Indigenous and colonized peoples. Similar exhibits appeared at international exhibitions in Amsterdam, Chicago, Brussels, and Buffalo.
At the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 in St. Louis, more than 1,100 Filipinos were exhibited, while thousands of Indigenous people from around the world participated in anthropological exhibits and cultural demonstrations.