Victorian science treated exotic people as collectible specimens

Evidence

By now there was no doubt, in England at least, that by the bank of the Yellow River, there lived a tiny band of Israelites. However, still more evidence needed to be found. And the miracle happened on July 20, 1851, more than two centuries after Ricci’s trip to China. On their second trip, Chui and Chiang brought back with them six Torah scrolls, some fifty-odd small manuscripts and also two brothers from the dying Kaifeng Jewish community. (It is important to note that bringing back living objects, including people, from exotic places for study and for exhibition was part of the fashion as well as part of the science of the time.) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 357

Categorization

• CANDY: Victorian-era ‘collectors’ brought home human beings along with scrolls as scientific curios — a ghoulish detail that lands even stripped of context.