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During nearly a century, between the 1851 London Great Exhibition and (at least) the eve of WWII a very ancient practice of putting on display human beings of exotic origins established itself in Europe and, in general, in the Western world, modifying their previous significance and scope and assuming the aspect of a highly organized commercial activity and a regular spectacular happening within the great expositions of different size and extent – national, international, colonial, imperial, universal – which became a frequently recurring international rendezvous. On such occasions, groups of human beings were systematically brought from every part of the non-European world toward the Western capitals and other cities seats of the expositions to be variously put on display as actors of what has also been termed ‘human zoo’, but we can better call an ‘exhibitionary complex’, whose script in fact was the result of different and often competing agencies engaged in defining how those ethnic types were placed in the great map of mankind, civilization and societies. What was at stake in a more or less explicit way was their possessing all the requisites of a fully developed human nature and their rightful or conditional or limited belonging to a proper human condition. The interplay between the several actors involved in the living ethno-exhibitions determined the degree of de-humanization or animalization or commodification, or else of positive appreciation, to which those peoples were exposed. This paper intends – by reference to a series of historical examples and by discussing the ‘human zoos’ paradigm – to offer a summary interpretation of a phenomenon through which the nature of the displayed individuals as human beings and as members of cultural groups was questioned and interpreted according to the different paradigms concurring to define roles and meanings of the participants to the exhibitionary devices.

Guido Abbattista - Rolando Minuti, Premessa Marcel Dorigny, Yves Benot (1920-2005) Guido Abbattista, Africains en exposition (Italie XIXe siècle) entre racialisme, spectacularité et humanitarisme Sophie Audidière, Nature humaine et diversité: la facticité selon Helvétius Yves Benot, Les Sauvages d’Amérique du nord: modèle ou épouvantail? Carminella Biondi, "De la littérature des nègres" de l’abbé Grégoire: un plaidoyer manqué? Andrew Curran, Imaginer l’Afrique au siècle des Lumières Thierry Hoquet, La nouveauté du Nouveau Monde du point de vue de l'histoire naturelle Girolamo Imbruglia, Un impero d'età moderna: la Compagnia di Gesù Renato G. Mazzolini, L’interpretazione simbolica della pigmentazione umana nell’antropologia fisica del primo Ottocento Rolando Minuti, Tolleranza e islam. Aspetti di un dibattito tra Seicento e Settecento Marco Platania, Formes de la liberté: images politiques des Indiens d’Amérique dans la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle Emmanuelle Sibeud, "Comment peut-on etre noir ?" Le parcours d'un intellectuel haïtien a la fin du XIXe siècle Ann Thomson, L'Europe des lumieres et le monde musulman: une alterite ambiguë Larry Wolff, The Adriatic Origins of European Anthropology

Guido Abbattista - Rolando Minuti, Introduction. Ann Thomson, Issues at stake in eighteenth-century racial classification. Annette Meyer, The experience of human diversity and the search for unity. Concepts of mankind in the late Enlightenment. Silvia Sebastiani, Race and national characters in eighteenth-century Scotland: the polygenetic discourses of Kames and Pinkerton. Monika Niewójt, Races humaines et liberté dans la pensée politique de Jan Potocki à la veille de la Révolution. Carminella Biondi, Le problème des gens de couleur aux colonies et en France dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle.