Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, African villages were recreated across Europe as amusement parks that served to extol the cultural superiority of the colonial empire.
They are also strong vectors for racist stereotypes, as illustrated by the museum exhibit Belgium.
“Human Zoo: The Colonial Exhibition” at the Museum of Africa outside Brussels until March next year has resonance, as the building is on the site where Belgian King Leopold II in 1897 reconstructed three “Congolese villages” on royal lands.
At the time, Belgian Congo – today the Democratic Republic of the Congo – was Leopold’s private property, and 267 men and women were taken from there and forcibly exhibited at the Brussels World’s Fair, asked to sit down for visitors to watch.
Seven of them died, from the cold to the point of illness.
The episode is featured in a museum exhibit, which features 500 items and documents showing the suffering of indigenous peoples under various colonial powers.
The ancient ethnographic displays were designed to “show them as primitive” and to “reinforce white superiority,” explained organizers.
Skull measurements — craniometry — were used to support the “inferior race” theory.
The show’s curators estimate that an “industry” featuring humans lured some 1.5 billion people between the 16th and 1960s to gawk.
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Dark Tour at Belgium’s ‘Human Zoo’
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