When Human Zoos Paraded Real People: A Dark Chapter Of Mankind

There are many dark chapters in mankind’s history ranging from transatlantic slave trade to holocaust to dropping of nuclear bombs. While most are brought up to serve as a reminder of human misdeeds — one sordid tale often goes unnoticed — the presence of ‘human zoos’. Up until the late 1950s, white Europeans could go and see people from other ethnic backgrounds exhibited in cages for entertainment purposes during trade fairs. Akin to the modern zoos where animals are exhibited, humans, that too of a certain complexion were paraded.

A Reddit post recently went viral showing a picture of a human zoo in Paris in 1905 where the fancy, aristocratic white people could be seen curiously observing the black-skinned inhabitants, possibly shipped from Africa, going about their business. The powerful image drew an immediate and visceral response from the netizens who were left shellshocked by the uncivilised history of modern humans.

“Always blows my mind to see things like this happened so recent, relatively,” said one user, while another added: “I truly don’t understand. Was empathy invented in the late 1900s? How can you just watch this??”

A third commented: “1958??? Were they displaying some old guy with a cigar in an easy chair watching TV? Seems ridiculous such a thing could exist at that time. Or any time.”

Human Zoo in Paris, 1905. The human Zoo definitely existed mainly in Europe and America both Asians, indigenous people of America and Africans were being displayed. The last “Human zoo” in Brussels, Belgium was closed in 1958.
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According to a BBC report, human zoos started as ‘wide-eyed curiosity’ on the part of the observers, often colonialists, but soon turned into a pseudo-science in the mid-1800s as researchers attempted to test out their theory of races.

During the peak of the colonial period, hundreds of thousands of people visited these human zoos created as part of the great international trade fairs and quenched their curiosity for ‘human exploration’.

Belgian king Leopold II had nearly 267 men, women and children transported to Tervuren for a colonial exhibition in 1897, according to a NYT report. Six Congolese men and one woman who were exhibited like zoo animals in a nearby park died of influenza and pneumonia after being forced to spend their days outside. Their grave is present outside the heavily restored building of the Roman Catholic church at the centre of Tervuren.

Outside the French capital of Paris, a park called the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale houses the remains of one of the world’s few human zoos. In the early 20th century, white visitors would come to the ‘park’ and see the exotic animals, and plants as well as actual people from territories in Africa, Asia, and Oceania who were brought there. Today, the human zoo has been turned into a peculiar park but the ruins of the racist past, remain visible in the overgrown grass.