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The Oriental India poster: Transnational imagery and ethnographic representation in the American circus

Barnum & Bailey’s Oriental India in 1896 was the pinnacle of the focus on ethnographic shows in the American circus. The late nineteenth century had witnessed a growing trend in Europe and America for displays of the exotic aspects of foreign cultures as popular entertainment. Advertising for such shows generally took the form of posters composed of collages of inconsistent imagery describing the circus that were culled and adapted from mass print media of the period. Oriental India, however, was unusual in the American trajectory of performance and advertising. The stated theme of the show was the ‘home life’ of the performers, and its poster partially emphasized this aspect through diligent reproduction of photographs of daily life taken by colonial photographers in Ceylon. The reliance on imagery already imbued with contemporary attitudes suggests the poster’s attempted authenticity. The inclusion of some circus imagery, combined with unrelated religious, cultural and ceremonial components, resulted in a mass-produced image that distributed inaccurate portrayals of the source cultures. Documenting the imagery and photographs at their origins across the decades provides additional understanding regarding the participation of the American circus in global image flows in the late nineteenth century.