The Royal Museum for Central Africa began as a temporary exhibition in 1897 in Tervuren, where Leopold had his country estate.
The most talked-about part of the exhibition was the “human zoo” — a mock African village set up in the estate’s woods and ponds. King Leopold, who never set foot in Congo, imported 267 Congolese men, women and children to Tervuren and displayed them behind a fence.
“When Leopold heard they were getting sick because of candy they were eating that was tossed to them by the crowd, he put up an equivalent of a ‘Don’t Feed the Animals’ sign at a zoo, saying, ‘the blacks are fed by the organizing committee,’” [Adam] Hochschild said in a documentary based on his book [King Leopold’s Ghost].
Seven Congolese died of pneumonia and influenza at this human zoo and were buried in Tervuren. Marie-Claire Lusamba, a Congolese businesswoman living in Belgium, leaves flowers at their grave before exploring the serene park that used to be the human zoo. She says the racism she sees in Belgium is directly tied to colonialism.
“If they acknowledge that, then we can move forward,” she says. “Because it did not stop with Leopold and this human zoo.”
Throughout the late 19th century, and well into the 1950′s, Africans and Natives were kept as exhibits in zoos. These human zoo’s continued in Europe as late as 2007. This is a photograph of an African Girl in a Human Zoo in Belgium Brussels, 1958. It is possible that underground human zoo’s still take place and that missing peoples could possibly be at these locations.
Slavery of African people, ethnic cleansing of Native Americans and colonialist imperialism are seeds that intertwine to create racism that still has impacts today. One example of the sad human history of racism of colonizers seeing themselves as superior to others is the long history of human zoos that featured 100’s of thousands of Africans and conquered indigenous peoples, putting them on display in much the same way as animals. People would be kidnapped and brought to be exhibited in human zoos. It was not uncommon for these people to die quickly, even within a year of their captivity. This history is long and deep and continued into the 1950’s.
Throughout the early 20th century, Germany held what was termed a, “Peoples Show,” or Völkerschau. Africans were brought in as carnival or zoo exhibits for passers-by to gawk at.
In the late 1800′s, Europe had been filled with, “human zoos,” in cities like Paris, Hamburg, Antwerp, Barcelona, London, Milan, and Warsaw. New York too saw these popular exhibits continue into the 20th century. There was an average of 200,000 to 300,000 visitors who attended each exhibition in each city.
The World’s Fair, in 1889 was visited by 28 million people, who lined up to see 400 indigenous people as the major attraction. The 1900 World’s Fair followed suit, as did the Colonial Exhibitions in Marseilles (1906 and 1922) and in Paris (1907 and 1931) which displayed naked or semi-naked African and First nation humans in cages. Paris saw 34 million people attend their exhibition in six months alone.
Just four years shy of the 20th century, the Cincinnati Zoo kept one hundred Sioux Native Americans in a mock village at the zoo for three months.
These sorts of, “human zoos,” continued even later. The Brussels 1958 World’s Fair kept a Congolese village on display. Even as late as April 1994, an Ivory Coast village was kept as part of an African safari in Port-Saint-Père (Planète Sauvage), near Nantes, France.
In Germany, as late as 2005, Augsburg’s zoo in Germany had similar exhibits. In August 2005, London Zoo also displayed humans wearing fig leaves, and in 2007, Adelaide Zoo housed people in a former ape enclosure by day. They were, of course, allowed to return home at night, unlike many of the earlier incarnations of these racist displays.
Many people console themselves with the belief that the racism of yesterday remains safely in the past. But the echoes of the, “human zoo,” into recent years show that this is far from the case. The racism of the past continues to bleed through into the present.
Now we are stuck inbetween the myth and the truth.
That racism continues in Belgium up to date is a truth that wont go away.
That human beings were kept in cages and branded God’s mistake, Miscreation and such, is still a piece of imerial and colonial history that we are stuck with.
That some of these people lived, procreated and died in these human zoos is a testament to the shame of both the victims and the perêtuators of the most heinous crime
That the cruelty of arm amputation was started by supposed Belgium priests on the Congolese people who resisted conversion to Christianity , could be either myth or truth. But having been taught this in the University, I will pitch my tent with the truth camp.
That the entire Congo belonged to King Leopold of Belgium as his personal property and garden to do as he willed; this including natural resources and human.
That he gave this entire property as a gift to Belgium, for them to continue with the iniquity he initiated. Fact or fiction?
That King Leopold as his gang of hunters used Congo as hunting ground, and that in most cases it was not animals they were hunting but the Mbutti pigmies. Fact or Truth?
That no sort of compesations have been paid to dampen the trauma or at least placate these extremelly dehumanised people is subject to every sort of conjectures.
All these have given rise and even credence to phographs such as this. It has been in the cyber space for quite some time now and titled as Belgium soldiers hanging a little Congolese boy because his father was unable or is it refused to pay Agricultural tax. Whether this is true or not, this writer can not immediately tell but what stands out as glaring fact is that the sadism metted out by Belgium on the Congolese makes room for any kind of attrocity levied against them to seem credible.
