Colonial imagination at exotic fairground theatres: ‘Come and see; and ye shall believe’?

The programme of this fairground attraction reported that the artists were previously featured at the Paris Jardin d'Acclimatation: the Parisian amusement park of the same name in the Bois de Boulogne which still exists today. This park originated in 1860 as a zoo with mainly plants and animals from the French colonies but evolved into a space where humans were also exhibited. From 1877 to 1912, the park organized the ‘Acclimatation Anthropologique’, in which people from colonial territories were exhibited as a living attraction. This not only happened in France. German animal trader Carl Hagenbeck also travelled through Europe with his Völkerschauen: shows in which people from distant countries were presented ‘in their natural habitat’.

Exhibiting a so-called zoo humain had deep historical roots. Ever since the fifteenth century and during the transatlantic slave trade that followed, people from non-European cultures were forcibly transported to royal courts as novelties or diplomatic gifts. Chinese sailors also exhibited African residents in their homeland. The exhibition of people at the fair was part of a widespread show practice that responded to an insatiable craving for ‘curiosities’.

Although heavily criticized, especially in the first half of the nineteenth century, the practice exploded in the last decades of the nineteenth century. This was the direct result of increasing colonial trade. Showmen such as Carl Hagenbeck and P.T. Barnum cleverly capitalized on this interest. They built empires of ‘exotic’ animal and human trafficking, and in their wake a network of countless ‘impresarios’ emerged who travelled the world as managers of people from various colonies.

This ‘human spectacle’ could be seen at a range of locations: not only at the fairground or the zoo, but also at the circus, in bars, at the theatre, in popular museums, in amusement parks, and especially at the immensely popular universal, colonial, and regional exhibitions. The public was offered a fictitious view of ‘distant cultures’, which were often reduced to stereotypes that reinforced colonial ideas of superiority.

In addition to the actual presence of people from colonial territories, fictional and sensationalized versions of the exotic emerged. For example, the 1884 Ghent fair presented a ‘Schoone Indiaansche’ (beautiful native woman), a young woman from the Dutch island of Marken. She was blessed with the tail of a mermaid and acquired the name ‘Schoone Indiaansche’ after she adopted the manners and customs of the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands while travelling with Captain Davidson. Another imaginative example at the fairground was the exhibition of ‘Bolokoo’, a so-called homme à la peau rouge (red-skinned man), from the mysterious island of ‘Gayka’.

Exhibited people at the fairground were a sensational complement to other fairground attractions that informed the population about the conquests and exploitation of colonial territories and their inhabitants. Similarly, people from non-European cultures were depicted in wax museums or so-called panopticons, and as moving puppets in mechanical theatres. In turn, the magic lantern brought distant places to life through colourful light projections, giving the audience the feeling of travelling to exotic destinations, albeit through the filtered lens of the colonial imagination. These stagings played on the Western fascination with the unknown, where spectacle was more important than truth.

Behind the scenes of these human exhibitions, conditions were less favourable. It remains hard to retrieve detailed information on the circumstances each group of exhibited people lived in, but we can still find a lot of information in archives. Although some people participated on a voluntary basis, many depended on European and American impresarios who organized their trips and managed their finances. Records show that these contracts were often problematic. There are numerous ‘foreign national records’ in the Brussels State Archive that describe the dire working conditions at these human exhibitions.

A file on ‘Cinghalais’ (inhabitants of present-day Sri Lanka) who performed at the Liege Fair in 1906 identifies four young dancers from Kandy: Bandia (25 years old), Pina (26 years old), Setuva (21 years old), and Diske (23 years old). They were under contract to forain Jean-Baptiste Watrin, who paid them thirty percent of his earnings. Whether they effectively received that money remains uncertain.

Some performing groups entered into conflict with local authorities. In 1900, a ‘Troupe Cinghalais’ performing at the fair in Saint-Gilles was fined for not having a valid permit. Even before the fine could be collected, the troupe had left for an unknown destination. This shows how precarious the existence of these itinerant performers actually was: They were constantly travelling from city to city, with no guarantees of fair payment or decent living conditions. Some were abandoned by their European and American impresarios, while others did not survive the long journeys due to a combination of exhaustion, homesickness, and illness.

In addition to the commercial exploitation at human exhibitions, the prevailing scientific curiosity also took a toll on the people being displayed. The so-called armchair anthropology of the late nineteenth century focused on measuring and classifying bodies. Researchers eagerly exploited the presence of people from distant lands to take skull measurements, map facial features, and formulate pseudoscientific theories about ‘racial hierarchies’. This led to an imaginary in which Western visitors saw their own superiority confirmed. Photography stimulated and confirmed this perception. For example, people on display were photographed frontally and in profile in to facilitate measurements, mimicking how criminals are processed. Such anthropometry could then serve popular racial theories, in which the white male was invariably ranked first, as the gold standard for all people.  

The perceived inferiority of people of colour was fuelled not only by misleading pseudoscientific interpretations about physical measurements, but also by stereotypical imagery. The people exhibited on stage were often staged as ‘animalistic’, ‘seductive’, and ‘belligerent’, to which countless caricatural depictions contributed. Members of ‘exotic troupes’ at the fair were reduced to singing and dancing creatures. Weapons, musical instruments, and ‘primitive’ clothing were part of the staging to highlight a perceived wildness and sensuality. So-called re-enactments emphasized first and foremost an ‘otherness’, with a representation that was often far removed from the person’s authentic living environment.

Exhibiting people at fairgrounds, colonial exhibitions, and world fairs reflected the way the Western world viewed non-European cultures. It was a spectacle in which viewing pleasure, fascination, and colonial power structures converged. The pervasiveness of this imagery endured for decades. As recently as 1958, spectators were throwing nuts at Congolese members of a recreated village at the World’s Fair in Brussels. Fuelled by sensationalism, people of colour were reduced to caricatures serving colonialism and white superiority in countless popular spectacles. In the process, spectacle prevailed over truth.

Today, museums, historians, and researchers increasingly recognize the impact of these colonial spectacles and the role they played in forming persistent stereotypes. By studying archives, reconstructing narratives, and organizing critical exhibitions, we are shedding new light on a past long underexposed. The fairground spectacle of the past tells not only a story of thrill and wonder, but also displays a narrative of power, image, and the long shadow that colonialism cast over how cultures were represented.