Elephant empire: zoos and colonial encounters in Eastern Europe

Abstract

Whereas zoological gardens and animal collections in North America and Western Europe are well researched from historical, philosophical, and cultural perspectives, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the history and legacy of these modernizing institutions in Eastern Europe. To bridge this gap in scholarship, I investigate the traffic in exotic animals to this region with a focus on a particular species. Historically, elephants have been considered prime symbols of the power and triumph of the colonial empire, and were thus often the jewels of colonial animal collections across Europe. In this article, I explore how the colonial origin of elephants as both big game and charismatic megafauna translates into a geopolitical context without direct overseas colonies, in order to trace the material links between species, race, transnational commodity networks, and structures of identity formation. Based on archival and bibliographic research focused on the Poznań Zoo in years 1871–1945, this article offers a critical analysis of the role of elephant performance in zoos, circuses, and travelling shows in mediating and mobilizing imperial longings. From this vantage point I suggest that studying public zoos in Eastern Europe offers a unique insight into a physical presence of colonial imperialism (via traffic in exotic species) in an area without overseas colonies, through a site where modernist models of citizenship, nationhood, and Europeanness are forged at the interface between science, education, and transnational politics. Given that zoos were crucial for the development of the biological perspective in the West, I posit a reconfiguration of zoos as ‘contact zones’ and primary sites for colonial encounter within the empire from a semi-peripheral perspective.