A 1904 display of Somali villagers, billed as a rare opportunity to observe a “little known but interesting people” and which drew more than 350,000 visitors to Bradford’s Great Exhibition, is being revisited in a new exhibition that seeks to examine the complex realities behind the colonial spectacle.
Exhibition’s purpose: beyond the spectacle
Opening on Saturday at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, the exhibition — titled A Somali Village in Lister Park: Weaving Together Industry, Culture and Empire — does not attempt to recreate the original display. Instead, it aims to centre the lives and experiences of the Somali people and confront how empire shaped Bradford’s cultural institutions and wealth. Guest curator Abira Hussein said the project was “not a redisplay” but about “thinking critically about why this display happened in the first place, how these people were framed, and the wider colonial systems that made it possible.”
Hussein deliberately avoided describing the 1904 village as a “human zoo”, noting that while the phrase captures the violence of colonial display, it can flatten “the conditions of recruitment, labour and negotiation that shaped the Somali village”. The new exhibition foregrounds those conditions, exploring how members of the Somali troupe negotiated contracts and wages, sold crafts to visitors, and even staged a protest after a fire destroyed four huts. The troupe received compensation of £15 — equivalent to just over £1,600 today — which they considered inadequate. Some individuals chose to return home; others continued on tours in Germany, the rest of Europe and North America.
Historical context: the village and its people
The original display, which ran from May to October 1904, featured 57 Somali men, women and children (some records indicate the group numbered up to 100) living in a walled compound in Lister Park. Visitors watched them cook, weave, dance, slaughter sheep for meals, attend school and learn Arabic and the Qur’an. It was considered one of the most popular and profitable attractions of the Great Exhibition, generating funds that helped support Cartwright Hall’s civic art collection for decades.
The troupe was led by Sultan Ali, who acted as broker and negotiator. Researchers have uncovered evidence of resistance: after the fire, the group protested publicly. The exhibition also highlights the stories of Halimo Abdi Badal and Khadija Yorkshire, believed to be the first recorded Muslim burial and birth in Bradford respectively. Halimo died of tuberculosis at the age of 26, and her grave bears Koranic inscriptions. These individuals point to what curators describe as one of the oldest Black and Muslim communities in the region.
The Somali village was part of a wider trend of “human zoos” or ethnological expositions prevalent across Europe and North America during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. In the UK, the Crystal Palace in London hosted a similar display of 60 Somalis in 1895. Other notable examples include the 1889 Paris World’s Fair and the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, which featured over 1,100 Filipinos. Such displays were used to reinforce racial hierarchies and justify colonial rule.
Broader implications: wool, empire, and the white gaze
Bradford’s Great Exhibition was deeply tied to the city’s wealth from the wool trade. Yahya Birt, a guest curator who discovered his grandmother attended the 1904 exhibition, noted that while cotton is often associated with colonial exploitation, “the story of wool as a colonial commodity, and the wealth it generated in Yorkshire, is largely untold.” The mechanisation of wool combing in Bradford — known as “Worstedopolis” — drove global sheep farming and settler colonialism, with vast tracts of land violently seized from Indigenous populations to meet industrial demand.
Profits from the Somali village directly funded specific artworks in Cartwright Hall’s collection, including a 1906 marble bust of Samuel Cunliffe Lister (Baron Masham), whose estate included the land for Lister Park, and Arthur Rackham’s 1907 children’s book The Magic Carpet. The exhibition identifies these objects as tangible legacies of colonial display.
Part of the exhibition also examines how postcards and photography from the era shaped what Birt and Hussein describe as the “white gaze”. Birt said people “had to be acculturated into seeing other people in this particular way.” The display brings together season tickets, commemorative badges, postcards sold during the original exhibition, archaeological finds uncovered in Lister Park, and Somali textile cloth, mats, fans and baskets loaned by Culture House and Koor Archives — many never before displayed in a British institution.
“We’re not trying to paint a rosy picture,” Birt said. Lizzie Cartwright, collections manager at Bradford District Museums and Galleries, added: “It’s about us, as an organisation, recognising our role in history. And, the relevance of the Somali village as the first Muslim community in Bradford.” Hussein echoed that there was “exploitation and unequal power, but there was also resistance and negotiation.” Researchers are now hoping descendants of those who lived in the village may come forward with memories, photographs, stories or poetry passed down through oral history. “We know there’s still more history to uncover,” Hussein said.
