From the late 18th century, as European dominance of the non-European world increased further, representatives of a much more diverse range of ethnic groups began to arrive in Europe and the West as part of a more systematic commercial exploitation of the interest in them. Not only Native Americans, but also Africans and Asians, began to be transported to Europe to adorn the temporary European museums of mankind. At the height of this vogue in the second half of the 19th century, they were taken on extensive tours, often lasting several months and visiting several countries. Purporting to show living "others" in their "native" dress, re-enacting their customary ways of life in reconstructions of their "natural" environment, these "human zoos" with their "black villages" were not only a form of entertainment, but a public enactment of the perceived superiority of the white race as reflected in the backwardness of "savages". Notwithstanding the occasional protests of humanitarian, religious or political associations, French anthropologists and ethnologists in 19th century established the practice of studying living people as though they were insouciant beings, photographing, measuring and classifying them by physical traits. "Scientific" and "popular" racism both contributed to the objectification of non-Europeans in exhibitions and "human zoos".
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From the late 15th century, when the first "savages" were transported to Europe, to the first decades of the 20th century, when exotic people were a regular feature in colonial and imperial exhibitions, many aspects of this phenomenon changed. The triumphal parades of Columbus and Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) through Seville, Toledo or Barcelona were echoed by the contingents of colonial troops taking part in European military parades into the 20th century. In the meantime, however, an industry had come into being to exploit European interest in "savage" and exotic humans. Capitalist entrepreneurs like the German wild animal importer Carl Hagenbeck (1844–1913) and the American impresario Phyneas T. Barnum (1810–1891) transformed ancient practices of freak or alien exhibition into a large-scale commercial entertainment industry in the age of leisure, mass entertainment and consumerism. Ethnic shows were much more diverse and their audiences considerably larger. The phenomenon of the "professional savages" eventually emerged with members of ethnic groups entering contractual or quasi-contractual agreements to appear as warriors, hunters, horsemen and dancers in ethnic shows. What did not to change, however, was the core ideological message conveyed by such spectacles: non-European people were depicted as inferior, as mere objects for the entertainment of Europeans. These ethnic exhibitions afforded the opportunity to a Western mass audience to personally encounter human "otherness" and to realize how remote it was from European civilization. The sense of dislocation, as well as cruel and degrading treatment, meant that the lot of the human exhibits was frequently a miserable one. Even after death, many were denied the dignity of being treated like human beings, as their corpses were handed over to comparative anatomists and others for further study and display.
