Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain

by Sadiah Qureshi

In May 1853, Charles Dickens paid a visit to the “savages at Hyde Park Corner,” an exhibition of thirteen imported Zulus performing cultural rites ranging from songs and dances to a “witch-hunt” and marriage ceremony. Dickens was not the only Londoner intrigued by these “living curiosities”: displayed foreign peoples provided some of the most popular public entertainments of their day. At first, such shows tended to be small-scale entrepreneurial speculations of just a single person or a small group. By the end of the century, performers were being imported by the hundreds and housed in purpose-built “native” villages for months at a time, delighting the crowds and allowing scientists and journalists the opportunity to reflect on racial difference, foreign policy, slavery, missionary work, and empire.

 

Peoples on Parade provides the first substantial overview of these human exhibitions in nineteenth-century Britain. Sadiah Qureshi considers these shows in their entirety—their production, promotion, management, and performance—to understand why they proved so commercially successful, how they shaped performers’ lives, how they were interpreted by their audiences, and what kinds of lasting influence they may have had on notions of race and empire. Qureshi supports her analysis with diverse visual materials, including promotional ephemera, travel paintings, theatrical scenery, art prints, and photography, and thus contributes to the wider understanding of the relationship between science and visual culture in the nineteenth century.

 

Through Qureshi’s vibrant telling and stunning images, readers will see how human exhibitions have left behind a lasting legacy both in the formation of early anthropological inquiry and in the creation of broader public attitudes toward racial difference.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, 19th Century, Anthropology

392 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Irem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sadiah Qureshi asks an important question regarding the relations of ethnology and exhibitionary order; how were the displayed peoples transformed into ethnological material for the purpose of anthropology? She also provides a broad overview about the usage of advertisements. It mainly examines the representation of people on these promoting materials and its textual narrative that were applied to turn the displayed ones into commodity during the nineteenth century in Britain.

[Lucy Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

the “interpreting exhibitions” chapter and the proposed method to analysing human zoos is very well done.
Qureshi does not shy away from the limited primary information, which is a problem with writing histories on such topics, and takes an approach (using promotional advertisements, magazine reviews, etc) I would have never considered.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took a while to finish this book, but it was a great exploration of the history of human zoos and human displays. Focused on the UK, but does look across Europe and the US. I think it could have pushed more on how this ties to “curiosity” and future (perverse?) concepts of human display.

[Michaela]

An interesting read up to the point I put it down--I just didn't have the bandwidth for it (June '23)

[Jbondandrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have found the subject of this book to be a well written one. The British found it necessary to exploit the peoples it controled and show their supposed superiority.

[Stephanie McGarrah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating subject, at times Peoples on Parade felt a little dry with that classic academic textbook feel but in the end I had to be generous with the stars. Usually I am turned off by too much editorial or conjecture, but Sadiah Qureshi had some very interesting things to say about race that can be applied to many topics beyond the 19th century display of people. This is a long quote, but I think its important and I'm glad it was reinforced throughout the writing:

"It is worth being especially wary of employing color-based dichotomies. Whitenessand blackness are problematic terms of unification, because they can erase significant differences between the people of the same color, and they are historically contingent and contested categories. For example, most of the African peoples discussed were usually referred to as ethnically distinct peoples, such as the San, Zulu, or Ndebele, rather than black or African. Similarly, Britons were subdivided into may groups, including the Irish, Anglo-Saxon and Caledonian...

The broad consensus that exhibitions of living foreign peoples reinforced racist attitudes coupled with political investment has created histories that are both emotionally and politically potent. Anxieties that one might become complicit in displayed peoples' derogation or reenact and thereby contribute to the dissemination of racialist and voyeuristic views are both well founded and, one suspects, common. As such, it is likely, perhaps inevitable, that historians discussing the subject feel under pressure to appear to be resurrecting the shows as opportunities for further voyeuristic consumption or in order to denounce the shows as pseudoscientific entertainment. With such powerful responses in the fray, it is not difficult to see why many have taken the shows to be unproblematic icons of Western racist exploitation of foreign, often colonized, peoples. Prima facie, characterizing the practice of exhibiting foreign peoples as scientifically insignificant, racist spectacles may seem accurate and desirable. It certainly supports many contemporary notions of what constitutes acceptable entertainment and human treatment, consolidates the ostensible objectivity of scientific investigation, and is also amenable for certain political ends. It is not difficult to empathize with this use or the political commitments of those who, quite rightly, support campaigns against continuing racist oppression and modern forms of cultural imperialism, and seek recompense for past wrongs. Nonetheless, it is worth being more critical of the criteria currently used to establish displayed peoples; status within these prjects; otherwise, these people risk being reestablished as freaks renamed as cultural icons. All too often, the arguments that individuals such as Baartman or Tambo are iconic of historically marginalized communities have been premised on problematic arguments, such as color was central to the ascription of ethnic difference; historically there was a single image of the "black," "savage," or "other" operating; and displayed peoples were interpreted as typologically representative of this image. However, as discussed, suggestions that living foreign peoples were uniformly interpreted as "freaks" or "others" or within the context of imperialist nationalism are worth revising.

[This book] has sought to avoid simply adding the shows to an already long list of examples of endemic nineteenth-century racism; rather, it has suggested that more compelling accounts are needed of how the association between displayed peoples and human variety was created and maintained. Highlighting limitations in some of the criteria currently used to conceptualize displayed peoples; histories is not intended to imply that they cannot or should not be politicized. Rather, it is to suggest that being more critically reflexive about the contingency of common analytical terms, such as race, science, entertainment, or even human offers the option of a far more powerful and contextually sensitive basis for the ascription of modern political significance."

As is noted in the conclusion, the modern world is not immune to marketing and consume these identities. Significantly, an example is given showing these kinds of human displays as recently as 2005, when a mock "African village" was featured during a 4 day festival at Augsburg Zoo proving that the display of humans is not merely a racist relic of the past.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Qureshi narrates the complex and changing role(s) of the display of human beings in nineteenth-century Britain for entertainment, education or scientific study. As he summarizes his goal at the end of the book:
“Peoples on Parade has attempted to offer a history of displayed peoples that accounts for why they proved so commercially successful, how they were transformed from small entrepreneurial speculations into//government-sponsored initiatives, and what their lasting significance has been to scientific debates on the nature of human variation in the nineteenth century. “ 283

An interesting work with many fascinating archival images (though unsurprisingly mortifying at times).

[Bailey Hamilton ⭐️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read for uni… got a bad mark… was ok