ABSTRACT
Ethnic/ethnographic shows (both terms are used within this book) are a cultural phenomenon that developed on a massive scale in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. This form of entertainment involved displaying members of non-European communities to the public of the Old Continent, which regarded these people as “exotic.” The popularity of shows with non-European people reached its peak between the 1880s and the outbreak of World War I, and many chapters in this volume pertain to this period. In practice, though, the evolution of the phenomenon was dynamic in nature and occurred over a much longer period of time. This fact has been reflected in the timeframe of the present study, which encompasses the years between 1850 and 1939. 1
