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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'La belle Africaine': the Sudanese giraffe who went to France
Author:Sharkey, Heather J.ISNI
Year:2015
Periodical:Canadian Journal of African Studies (ISSN 0008-3968)
Volume:49
Issue:1
Pages:39-65
Language:English
Geographic terms:Sudan
France
South Sudan
Subjects:animals
exhibitions
history
1800-1899
1900-1999
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00083968.2015.1043712
Abstract:In 1826, Mehmet Ali of Egypt sent a giraffe from somewhere in what is now the Republic of the Sudan to King Charles X of France. The first live giraffe ever to reach France, she arrived when public museums and zoos were emerging, inspiring scholarly and popular interest in science and the world beyond French borders. This article studies the career and 'afterlives' of this giraffe in France and relative to giraffes at large in the Sudan, in order to trace a Franco-Sudanese history that has stretched from the early nineteenth century to the present. At the same time, viewing this connected history in the aftermath of the 2011 secession of South Sudan, when colonial and national borders appear contingent and subject to change, this article approaches the Sudan as a zone (as opposed to a fixed country) within global networks of migration involving people, other animals, things, and ideas. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]
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