On the occasion of the World Exposition held in Paris on May 5, 1889, aboriginal villages were erected in which some Africans and Kanaks, not to mention a number of Vietnamese, inhabitants of the Asian Annamiti Mountains, were erected under the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
And the French magazine Le Point, Le Point, says in its report on the subject that many previous exhibitions in Europe and America have already shown small groups of these categories and they were sometimes in cages.
But what Paris witnessed this time is unprecedented, as the number of people who showed up was 400, and the French government at the time was keen to stress that those who were seen by the spectators are “really Senegalese, Gabonese and Congolese people brought from their primitive forests,” as the newspaper put it.
What the organizers of this exhibition are promoting is, according to Le Point, an attempt to convince that a "civilized" nation like France was able to save these primitive beings from living in the darkness among the animals... which Le Point commented on by saying: "The worst of the matter is that there are those who believe That's what they say and they believe it."
Portrait of African Maasa (Shutterstock)
This exhibition lasted for 6 months, during which it was visited by about 28 million people who peeped at these unfortunate people distributed in a number of villages in the region of Les Invalides. The villages are Arab, Kanak, Gabonese, Congolese, Javanese and Senegalese.
And the public often thinks, according to the magazine, that what they are watching at this world exhibition is a zoo, and they do not hesitate to giggle and joke at the monkeys.
Visitors compare these "savages" to monkeys, pointing to their thick lips, oily skin, and curly hair, and some of them even reached the point of throwing food to them, so, for example, a Spanish tourist threw a banana at some of these indigenous people, and visitors do not hesitate to laugh at The aborigines saw them shivering at the doors of their huts, exhausted by disease.
Many of the participants in this type of exhibition never returned to their homes, as they fell victims to diseases common at the time in the West, such as smallpox and tuberculosis, and here Le Point notes that the people forgot at the time that the World Exhibition of 1889 was supposed to symbolize the centenary of the storming of the Bastille, That is, the first spark of the French Revolution, and to the French republican slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity".