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Peopling the landscape: Showmen, displayed peoples and travel illustration in nineteenth-century Britain

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17460654.2012.638804

1746-0662

Sadiah Qureshi,

Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis

Abstract Throughout the nineteenth century, millions of people paid to see exhibitions of foreign, often colonized, peoples performing songs, dances and other ceremonies in exhibitions designed to showcase their 'singular nature'. Originally consisting of a single performer or possibly a small group, by the end of the century displayed peoples were being imported in their hundreds to live in purpose-built 'native villages' under the aegis of world fairs. Significantly, performers were marketed as exemplars through the use of theatrical scenery, often drawn from travel literature, to geographically locate them in their homelands. By considering how travel literature and theatrical performances were combined in order to create new visual experiences, it is possible to reconstruct how such shows were both advertised and interpreted, and to shed light on practices of broader significance for understanding nineteenth-century visual culture. Keywords: Displayed peoplestravel literaturetheatrical sceneryexhibitionsrace Acknowledgements I am grateful for the advice of Jim Secord, Nick Jardine, Simon Schaffer, Sujit Sivasundaram, the Cambridge Victorian Studies Group, and Bernard Lightman. Notes 1. All quotations regarding the exhibition are from Anon. 1847a. 2. Knox's anti-colonialism stemmed from his belief that each race was best suited to the environment of their homeland and that any form of colonialism in which races were required to live outside this niche were doomed to failure. See Richards 1989 Richards, Evelleen. 1989. The 'moral anatomy' of Robert Knox: The interplay between biological and social thought in Victorian scientific naturalism. Journal of the History of Biology, 22: 373–436. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. 3. 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