Expositions ethnologiques et coloniales vivantes en Italie fasciste et libérale

Abbattista and Labanca's contribution is the first general outline of the phenomenon of human living exhibitions in Italy from the 1880s to the coming of Fascism. Largely based on archival and previously unexplored sources, it synthetizes the history of the Italian version of the European (and not only European) practice of human zoos, by adopting the standpoint of the history of mentality, of cultural history, of the history of political and colonial propaganda, of the history of anthropological concepts. This contribution shows how in Italy the highlight of human exhibit occurred during the decades until the outbreak of First World War within the context of the great national and international expositions. It underwent a relative decline during the 1920s and the eraly 1930s, when colonial domination became in Italy a tangible fact of an allegedly imperial character and not just a program toward which public opinion had to be channelled.