In order to reinforce ideas of the backwardness and savagery of Indigenous and non-Western peoples, individuals and governments would set displays featuring not only exotic plants and animals but also people.
Jack the Ripper’s London
You wouldn’t want to have lived in Jack the Ripper’s London. Whitechapel in East London had garnered a reputation for being poor, overcrowded, and crime-ridden even before the infamous murders of 1888. What dangers could be worse than a knife-wielding serial killer? Read on to see!
Haussmann’s Renovation of Paris
The Paris we have today is thanks to Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew Emperor Napoleon III and a French official with a dream, Georges-Eugène Haussmann.
Swimming Inventions of the 19th Century
Peoples around the world have taken pleasure in swimming throughout history and prehistory. Generally, they would swim in the nude or undergarments, like the Japanese fundoshi or a garment similar to boxer shorts in England. But Western concepts of modesty especially in the nineteenth century meant specialized garments for swimming but also specialized machines and jobs!
Angel Island Immigration Station: Ellis Island of the West
While many people immigrated through the better-known Ellis Island in New York, there was not a similar immigration processing station to manage immigrants coming from Asian countries via the West Coast. Angel Island off the coast of San Francisco, California opened as an immigrant detention center in 1910. It processed hundreds of thousands of immigrants mostly from China, Japan, Russia, and South Asia for over three decades until its closure in 1940.