E-Books →Peoples on Parade Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Sadiah Qureshi, "Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain"
English | 2011 | ISBN: 0226700968 | PDF | pages: 391 | 13.2 mb
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.