Paper long abstract:

What does a Western tourist wish to see in Central Africa, and what is showed to African visitors in Europe?

With the scramble for Africa still going on, large scientific and/or military exploration exploratory expeditions took place in Equatorial Africa and triggered an early and sportive kind of tourism. Rich (and sometimes well-known) Westerners traveled in a region encompassed between the Atlantic shore and the Great Lakes, up to Mount Kenya, or "Congo Free State". Alone or with their retinue, male hunters or female travelers journeyed through the region, behaving differently from explorers or missionaries, bringing with them their habits and their need for comfort and/or luxury. Then, they went back home with souvenirs, and images.

At the exact same time, colonial exhibitions organized by western capital cities put "indigenous villages" on show. These included people from those same equatorial African areas. Of course, the colonized on show during those exhibition had to be part of the settings especially mounted in such occasion. But they were also "entertained" during their stay in the metropolises, being toured in the cities, or even taken to Opera Houses. Unfortunately, little is known from the Africans staying in France, Belgium, or Italy directly. But some of the Europeans in charge of their reception there, as well as some local reviews, published useful information on their stay, and their activities.

These two different historical and early experiences are important to understand specificities of the North to South tourism nowadays, as well as how tourists are perceived by Southerners. In some ways, the resulting analysis possibly indicates how early 20th century Western travelers began preconceiving which places they ought to visit and which ones to show to natives.