‘Toung Taloung’ PT Barnum’s White Elephant, 1884
The white elephant in London: an episode of trickery, racism and advertising:
“This article explores how the exhibition of Barnum’s white elephant, housed in the London Zoological Garden between January and March 1884, became a forum to discuss nineteenth-century theories of race. The London Zoological Gardens provided opportunities for Victorians to directly encounter exotic animals and imaginatively exercise imperial authority. (3) By exhibiting the elephant, Barnum staged a trick enacting the English definition of a white elephant, playing on British perceptions of ‘eastern’ decadence and Burmese corruption. To nineteenth-century Britons, white elephants were misunderstood, but potent symbols. Popular travelogues had generated certain expectations of these animals: they were alleged to be holy to the kings of Siam and Burma, and worshipped because of their white colouration. The elephant’s white pigmentation was expected to provide visible proof of racial superiority in relation to the peoples of Siam and Burma, territories that were a focus of British imperial ambition. And it did—for some. Others were disappointed. They found its skin lackluster, splotchy and insufficiently white. Many could not distinguish this elephant from others of its species. As the authenticity of the animal was questioned, Barnum’s trick provoked anxiety about the maintenance of racial purity and white privilege. The ensuing controversy became an opportunity to discuss the precarious status of whiteness, and the subject of a popular Pears’ Soap advertising campaign.”
“Toung Taloung, the famous white elephant, which I brought from Burmah (sic), cost me $200,000. Like the public, I was greatly disappointed in him. He was as genuine a white elephant as ever existed, but, in fact, there was never such an animal known. The white spots are simply diseased blotches. My white elephant was burned to death at Bridgeport in November, 1887, and I can’t say that I grieved much over his loss.” -PT Barnum