Imagine walking into a zoo and seeing people instead of animals.

A crowd gathers around a fenced area. Children point. Adults stare. Some take photographs. Inside, men, women and children eat, talk, work or perform activities while strangers watch them.

Now imagine that this was not a scene from a film.

It happened.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, people from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, the Americas and other parts of the world were taken to Europe and America and displayed before paying audiences.

Some were presented in reconstructed villages. Some performed dances, music or demonstrations of everyday life. Others were examined by scientists who wanted to study their bodies.

They were presented as “exotic”, “primitive” or “savage”.

Today, these exhibitions are commonly known as human zoos.

The name itself was not usually used by the organisers. At the time, they were called ethnological exhibitions, colonial exhibitions or, in Germany, Völkerschauen, meaning “peoples’ shows”.

Whatever they were called, the idea was simple and disturbing.

People were turned into attractions.

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How Did This Even Begin?

The story did not start with a huge zoo or a colonial exhibition.

It began much earlier, when European explorers started travelling to distant parts of the world and returning with stories about people whose appearance, clothing, customs and way of life were unfamiliar to European audiences.

Sometimes these people were welcomed into royal courts as guests.

One example was Omai, a man from the Society Islands in the Pacific who travelled to Britain in the eighteenth century with the explorer Joseph Banks.

Omai met King George III and became something of a celebrity in British society.

People were fascinated by him.

Paintings were made of him. He attended social gatherings and was admired for his appearance and personality.

But there was already an uncomfortable question beneath the fascination.

Was Omai being treated as a guest, or as an exotic trophy brought back from a distant world?

At this stage, the line was not always clear.

But over time, something changed.

People from foreign lands were increasingly viewed not simply as individuals, but as examples of their entire race or culture.

And that was when curiosity began turning into something much darker.

When People Became “Specimens”

During the nineteenth century, European scientists became increasingly interested in classifying human beings.

They measured people’s skulls, bodies and physical features and attempted to divide humanity into different “races”.

Some went further.

They claimed that some races were naturally more intelligent, civilised or advanced than others.

Europeans were often placed at the top of these imagined hierarchies.

Africans and other non-European peoples were frequently described as being closer to an earlier stage of human development.

These ideas were not simply confined to books and laboratories.

They eventually became entertainment.

People could now go to an exhibition and see those racial theories acted out before their eyes.

Saartjie Baartman: The Woman Europe Turned Into a Spectacle

One of the most heartbreaking examples was Saartjie Baartman, a South African woman of Khoikhoi descent.

She was born around 1789 in the Cape region of southern Africa.

In 1810, she was taken to Britain and exhibited in London.

European audiences were encouraged to stare at her body because her physical features were considered unusual.

She was advertised as the “Hottentot Venus”.

She later travelled to France, where interest in her became even more disturbing.

French scientists examined her body and used her physical features in discussions about racial difference.

Baartman died in Paris in 1815.

But even death did not end the public fascination with her.

Her remains were preserved and displayed in a Paris museum.

For decades, visitors could see her skeleton and other preserved remains.

Think about that for a moment.

A woman had been taken from her homeland, exhibited while alive, examined after her death and then displayed again as a museum object.

She was not properly returned to South Africa until 2002, almost two centuries after she had died.

Her story became a powerful symbol of what happened when curiosity, racism and science were allowed to meet without respect for human dignity.

The Exhibitions Became Bigger

By the late nineteenth century, human exhibitions had become a major form of entertainment.

One important location was the Jardin d’Acclimatation in Paris.

It had originally been created for plants and animals, but from 1877 it began hosting exhibitions of people from different parts of the world.

The public came in large numbers.

People wanted to see Africans.

They wanted to see people from the Pacific.

They wanted to see Inuit people.

They wanted to see people whose cultures and appearances seemed unfamiliar to them.

And there was money to be made.

Entrepreneurs realised that they could bring groups of people to Europe, construct a village around them and charge visitors to watch them.

The exhibitions became bigger, more organised and more profitable.

Whole Villages Were Recreated

This was where the practice became particularly disturbing.

Instead of displaying one person, organisers could bring an entire group.

They built houses and fences.

They added animals.

They dressed the participants in clothing that audiences expected to see.

People cooked, danced, worked and performed demonstrations.

Visitors walked around the enclosure and watched.

It was almost like entering another country without actually leaving Europe.

But there was a problem.

What visitors saw was not necessarily ordinary life.

It was life arranged for them to watch.

The organisers decided what the public would see.

They decided what story would be told.

And the people inside the exhibition often had little control over how Europeans understood them.

Carl Hagenbeck and the “Peoples’ Shows”

One of the most famous names in this business was Carl Hagenbeck, a German animal dealer and entrepreneur.

Hagenbeck became famous for his zoo in Hamburg, but his business also organised Völkerschauen, or “peoples’ shows”.

Groups from Africa, Asia, the Pacific and other parts of the world were brought to European cities.

They were presented to paying audiences.

Some participants were paid.

Some travelled under contracts.

Some even returned to Europe for more than one exhibition.

This is an important part of the story because it is not true that every person who appeared in a human exhibition was kidnapped or physically forced into it.

Some people accepted the opportunity because they wanted to earn money or travel.

But being paid did not mean the situation was equal.

A person could agree to travel without agreeing to be called primitive.

They could agree to perform a dance without agreeing to have their entire culture presented as inferior.

They could accept a job while still being trapped inside a system where Europeans controlled the exhibition, the advertising and the story being told about them.

When Colonialism Entered the Picture

By this time, Europe was conquering and controlling huge parts of Africa and Asia.

Colonialism changed the purpose of these exhibitions.

They were no longer just about curiosity.

They could now help Europeans feel proud of their empires.

If Britain controlled parts of Africa, Britain could show Africans at an exhibition.

If France controlled territories in Africa and Asia, France could recreate those cultures in Paris.

The message was often simple.

Europe was modern.

Europe was powerful.

Europe was bringing “civilisation” to people it considered backward.

The people being displayed became part of the evidence.

The exhibition itself seemed to say:

“Look at these people. This is why they need us.”

That was colonial propaganda disguised as entertainment.

Belgium Put the Congo on Display

One of the clearest examples happened in Tervuren, Belgium, in 1897.

King Leopold II controlled the Congo Free State and wanted to encourage Belgian interest in his African colony.

As part of the Brussels International Exhibition, Congolese people were brought to Belgium.

Villages were constructed for them in Tervuren Park.

Visitors came to watch them.

A total of 267 Congolese people were brought to the exhibition.

They were expected to perform activities that Europeans associated with life in the Congo.

But the exhibition had a terrible human cost.

Seven Congolese people died during the exhibition.

They had been brought thousands of kilometres from home and placed in a European environment where they were exposed to conditions to which they were not accustomed.

The exhibition eventually ended, but the memory of what happened there did not.

Today, the Royal Museum for Central Africa acknowledges this history.

Then Came Ota Benga

If Saartjie Baartman’s story shows how a person’s body could become a spectacle, the story of Ota Benga shows just how far the idea could go.

Ota Benga was a Congolese man from the Mbuti people.

In 1904, he was brought to the United States by the American missionary and explorer Samuel Phillips Verner.

Benga was taken to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis, a huge world’s fair attended by millions of people.

He was presented alongside other people from Africa as part of an anthropological exhibition.

After the fair, Benga eventually returned to the United States.

His life would soon take an even more disturbing turn.

A Human Being Inside a Zoo

In 1906, Ota Benga was taken to the Bronx Zoo in New York.

At first, he helped around the zoo.

Then he was put on display.

He was placed in the Monkey House.

Visitors came to look at him.

Some watched him through the barriers.

Some laughed.

Some pointed.

Some treated the situation as entertainment.

A human being had effectively become another attraction at a zoo.

The display caused outrage among Black religious leaders and members of New York’s Black community.

They protested publicly and demanded that Benga be removed.

Their argument was straightforward.

He was a human being.

He should not be displayed like an animal.

The protests eventually succeeded.

The zoo stopped displaying him.

But what had happened to Benga could not simply be undone.

Ota Benga Never Got to Go Home

After leaving the zoo, Benga lived in institutions and later moved to Lynchburg, Virginia.

People tried to help him build a new life.

He learned English and worked.

But he wanted to return to Africa.

Then the First World War began.

Travel became extremely difficult.

Benga’s hope of returning home faded.

On 20 March 1916, Ota Benga died by suicide in Lynchburg.

He was about 30 years old.

A man who had been taken from Central Africa and displayed before thousands of strangers had died thousands of kilometres from the home he had wanted to return to.

His story remains one of the most powerful reminders that behind every exhibition was a real human life.

The World’s Fairs Made the Spectacle Even Bigger

Human exhibitions became particularly popular at international fairs.

These fairs were supposed to celebrate the achievements of modern civilisation.

Visitors came to see new machines, electricity, buildings, inventions and products.

But alongside all this modern technology, they could also see people from colonised countries.

That contradiction is difficult to ignore.

A society could celebrate its latest scientific invention while simultaneously displaying another human being as an example of primitiveness.

The same event could promote technological progress and racial prejudice.

Paris, 1931: Millions Came to See the Empire

In 1931, France held the International Colonial Exhibition in Paris.

It was enormous.

Millions of people attended.

The exhibition presented France’s colonial empire through buildings, products, performances, gardens and representations of colonial societies.

It was designed to make the French Empire look impressive.

Visitors could see what France wanted them to see.

But elsewhere in Paris, at the Jardin d’Acclimatation, a group of Kanak people from New Caledonia were displayed in a reconstructed village.

They were presented through racist stereotypes, including the false portrayal of them as cannibals.

Several members of the group died from illness during their time in France.

The exhibition showed how far the practice had developed.

People were no longer simply being brought to Europe because they were unusual.

Their presence was being used to create a story about European power.

And Then It Happened in 1958

Here is one of the most surprising parts of the story.

Human exhibitions did not completely disappear in the nineteenth century.

They continued into the twentieth century.

In fact, one of the last major examples happened in 1958.

That year, Belgium hosted Expo 58, the Brussels World’s Fair.

By then, the world had already experienced two world wars.

The Holocaust had revealed the devastating consequences of racial ideology.

African independence movements were growing.

European colonial empires were beginning to collapse.

Yet Belgium still created a Congolese village at the exhibition.

More than 600 Congolese people came to Belgium, while around 120 were displayed during the day in the Tropical Gardens.

Visitors watched them.

Some behaved disrespectfully.

Congolese students and intellectuals protested.

The situation became increasingly embarrassing.

Many of the Congolese participants left before the exhibition ended.

The village eventually closed.

Two years later, in 1960, the Congo became independent from Belgium.

A Baby Died at Expo 58

Among the Congolese people who travelled to Belgium for Expo 58 was an eight-month-old baby named Juste Bonaventure Langa.

He had been born in Léopoldville, now Kinshasa, in September 1957.

He died in Leuven on 22 May 1958.

The cause of his death remains unknown.

He was buried in Tervuren.

His grave remains there today.

While thousands of visitors came to the exhibition to experience a carefully created image of the Congo, a Congolese child lost his life in Belgium and never returned home.

It is a small detail in the enormous history of Expo 58.

But sometimes the smallest details tell us the most about what these exhibitions really meant.

Did Everyone Hate the Exhibitions?

Not necessarily.

And this is where the history becomes more complicated.

Some people who participated in these exhibitions were paid.

Some chose to travel.

Some enjoyed meeting people from other countries.

Some performers were professional entertainers.

Some even returned to Europe because the work provided income and opportunities to travel.

The visitors were also not all thinking exactly the same thing.

Some came because they were racist.

Some came because they were curious.

Some genuinely believed they were learning about other cultures.

Others simply wanted entertainment.

But the exhibitions still operated within a society where colonialism and racial stereotypes were widespread.

So even when a participant had agreed to travel, the larger system could still be deeply unequal.

The problem was not simply whether someone had signed a contract.

The problem was what happened after they entered the exhibition.

Their culture could be reduced to a performance.

Their bodies could be treated as evidence.

Their identity could be replaced by a stereotype.

And thousands of strangers could be encouraged to stare at them.

What Happened to the People After the Crowds Left?

This is one of the saddest questions in the entire history.

The exhibitions recorded enormous amounts of information about the people on display.

Photographs were taken.

Posters were printed.

Measurements were recorded.

Newspapers described them.

Scientists studied them.

But the personal thoughts of the people themselves were often poorly recorded.

We know the names of some.

We know the stories of others.

But many disappeared into history.

Their faces remain in photographs while their voices are missing.

That is one of the cruelest ironies of the human zoo era.

Europeans were extremely interested in observing these people.

But they were often much less interested in listening to them.

Why Did Human Zoos Finally Disappear?

There was no single day when the world suddenly decided that human exhibitions were wrong.

The practice declined because the world itself was changing.

The Second World War and the Holocaust made racial theories increasingly difficult to defend.

Colonised peoples were demanding independence.

European empires were weakening.

Ideas about race and human difference were being challenged.

Anthropology also changed.

The old belief that societies could simply be arranged from “primitive” to “civilised” increasingly lost credibility.

And the public itself began to question exhibitions that had once been considered normal entertainment.

By the middle of the twentieth century, the old human exhibition system was becoming increasingly difficult to defend.

But Expo 58 showed that it had not disappeared completely.

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The People Were Never Exhibits

Today, it is easy to look at photographs of human zoos and ask how people could possibly have thought such a thing was acceptable.

The answer is uncomfortable.

They had been taught to see it as normal.

They had been told that some people were exotic.

They had been told that some societies were primitive.

They had been told that European civilisation was superior.

They had been told that science could prove racial differences.

And then they were given a ticket and invited to look.

That is what makes the history of human zoos more than a strange story from the past.

It shows how dangerous an idea can become when an entire society accepts it.

Saartjie Baartman was not a specimen.

Ota Benga was not a zoo attraction.

The Congolese people at Tervuren were not decorations for a colonial exhibition.

The Kanak people in Paris were not characters in a European fantasy.

They were human beings.

Some had chosen to travel.

Some had been pressured or exploited.

Some were paid.

Some protested.

Some died.

But none of them stopped being human simply because someone placed a fence around them.

The exhibitions eventually disappeared.

The people who created them moved on.

The crowds went home.

But the photographs remained.

And so did the stereotypes.

Remembering this history means remembering the people who were forced to stand on the other side of the fence while the world looked at them.

Author’s Note

The story of human zoos is ultimately a story about what happens when curiosity loses its respect for humanity. People who came from different parts of the world were turned into entertainment, scientific specimens and symbols of colonial power, while their individual identities were often pushed aside. Their experiences, from Saartjie Baartman and Ota Benga to the Congolese people displayed in Belgium, remind us that behind every photograph and every exhibition was a real person with a home, family, culture and hopes of their own. Their stories deserve to be remembered not as strange spectacles from history, but as a warning about the danger of allowing prejudice and power to determine how we see other human beings.

References

AfricaMuseum, Royal Museum for Central Africa. “The Human Zoo of Tervuren, 1897.”

AfricaMuseum, Royal Museum for Central Africa. “Human Zoos.”

Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Exhibiting the Other: The Invention of the Savage.

Sánchez-Gómez, Luis A. “Human Zoos or Ethnic Shows? Essence and Contingency in Living Ethnological Exhibitions.” Culture & History Digital Journal, 2013.

Palais de la Porte Dorée. “The Colonial Exhibition of 1931.”

Smithsonian Institution. “The Tragic Tale of the Pygmy in the Zoo.”

New York Public Library. “Ota Benga and the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum.”

Library of Congress. Ota Benga Collection and George Grantham Bain Collection.

Hagenbeck, Tierpark. Historical documentation on Carl Hagenbeck and Völkerschauen.

Holmes, Richard. The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.