ABSTRACT
A national exhibition was organized in Geneva in 1896, and was a popular success. It was host to almost two million spectators, who discovered many exhibits, including an African Village. Emile Yung, a biologist, physiologist, zoologist, and anthropologist at the University of Geneva, gave a lecture on the subjects living in Geneva's African Village. The eminent professor's research demonstrates the extent to which the scientific community in the Switzerland of his era was reliant upon the exhibition of colonized peoples, to the point that it lost sight of itself, and particularly of its critical sense. Yung's presentation was demonstrative of this thinking: Anthropological characteristics of the nigritic race identified in representatives from Western Sudan: Wolofs, Fulas, Lawbes, and Toucouleurs. The people exhibited bore tribal names, which were meant to help visitors associate them with a space in Africa. Often, tribal nomenclature was a blend of pragmatism and colonialism.
