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SUMMARY:Empire: Displayed Peoples\, Empire and Anthropology in the Metropo
 le - Sadiah Qureshi (University of Birmingham)\; Discussant - Sujit Sivasu
 ndaram (University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20130606T123000Z
DTEND:20130606T143000Z
UID:TALK44945@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:William Carruthers
DESCRIPTION:Paying to see living foreign peoples perform was enormously po
 pular ‎in the nineteenth century. ‎Throughout the 1800s\, for a shilli
 ng or more\, the ‎public flocked to see everyone from Africans to ‎Azt
 ecs in European metropolitan centres. Foreign peoples would perform songs\
 , dances and ‎ceremonies designed to showcase both their ethnic ‘singu
 larity’ and lives abroad. Initially\, such ‎shows usually consisted of
  a single individual or small group imported in relatively haphazard ‎ci
 rcumstances. By the late nineteenth century\, particularly under the aegis
  of world fairs\, entire ‎‎‘villages’ of foreigners from around th
 e world were being exhibited together. ‎\n\nAcross the century\, the sho
 ws provided a form of popular entertainment combined with ‎intercultural
  encounter and scientific enquiry. For instance\, the shows were routinely
  marketed as opportunities to meet and greet ethnic groups which were unkn
 own in Europe. Canny ‎impresarios sought to maximise their profits by as
 sociating their shows with ongoing military\, ‎political and missionary 
 activity in the colonies. The shows were also routinely promoted as useful
  ‎for anyone with an interest in race and the new disciplines of ethnolo
 gy and anthropology. Thus\, ‎displayed peoples became specimens that wer
 e crucial to nineteenth-century debates on race. ‎This paper will consid
 er the importance of displayed people for broader histories of race\, scie
 nce ‎and empire. In particular it will argue that the shows were crucial
  opportunities for intercultural encounter. Moreover\, they were sites for
  the making of scientific knowledge because they allowed the lay and the l
 earned to create and participate in ongoing debates on the nature of human
  variation. In doing so\, the paper will also ‎consider opportunities fo
 r future histories of science and empire.‎ 
LOCATION:Seminar Room SG1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridg
 e CB3 9DT
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