“That ancient and modern wonder”: Giraffes, imperialism, and the making of the American menagerie, 1830–1840

Abstract

ABSTRACT Throughout the 1830s, American menagerie proprietors launched a systematic campaign to capture, transport, and display the giraffe. This article draws on the records of merchants, naturalists, diplomats, and showmen to examine the forces that rendered the world’s tallest animal a commodity. Tracing three American attempts to transport the giraffe – through British India, the Cape of Good Hope, and North Africa – it highlights the central role of imperial networks, Indigenous knowledge, and the slave trade in early zoological collecting. These efforts reveal the heightened levels of risk, failure, and exploitation behind the display of living animals, exposing imperial desires that continue to shape the giraffe’s endangerment today.