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Following the establishment of the modern circus in London and Paris during the later decades of the eighteenth century, the circus began its steady dispersion around the world. The global transmission of this new sort of public entertainment by peripatetic performers and entrepreneurs was in no small measure attributable to waves of colonialism, industrial advances in transportation and communication, and motivations arising from commercial interests. This chapter charts the transference of the circus to Australasia (Australia and New Zealand), the territories of Southeast Asia (including present-day Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines), and the South Asian territories of the Indian subcontinent and China in the nineteenth century. What is little understood about the processes of circus transculturation in these regions is that circus companies originating from colonial territories undertook transnational touring projects, thus enacting aesthetic and transcultural movements between territories on the periphery of empire. This chapter brings to light the ways that circuses were agents of colonialism and empire, as well as transcultural transmitters of aesthetic innovation in the period that was both the Age of Empire and the Age of Modernity.

This chapter accepts that the circus or, to be more precise, the large circuses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reflected a number of the ideas associated with modernity. It draws on a theoretical interpretation of modernity by Jameson and the delineation of historical eras by Marshall Berman. The publicity strategy of the FitzGerald Brothers' Australian Circus described indicates a proclivity for technology and its display. Frost, and all historians of the circus who followed him, trace the origins of the circus to the entrepreneurial and performance initiatives of Philip Astley in London, Paris, Dublin and the rural regions of both France and England during the latter decades of the eighteenth century. Frost's account of the early circus, and its striving for modes of production that were aesthetically and materialistically innovative, chimes with one of Jameson's observations about modernity.

This chapter explores the proposition that the history of the circus, and historical developments in electrical science, have more in common than has been previously acknowledged. Identifying that the emergence of the modern circus was synchronous with late eighteenth-century experimentation with electricity, discussion then shifts to the nineteenth century, and examination of various intersections between the circus and electrical science. The components of spectacle and showmanship are shown to be central to some of the connexions between circus and electricity brought forward in this chapter. Little more than a century after Astley’s first public shows exemplified the spirit and aesthetics of the modern circus, the full-blown showmanship of the circus and the spectacular wonders of electricity were each on display at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The enormous Fair precinct was brilliantly lit and powered by the new technology of electricity; Hagenbeck’s Zoological circus played to over two million customers during the six-month exhibition; and Nikola Tesla’s demonstrations of electrical effects using high-voltage, high-frequency alternating current elicited the kind of human marvelling the circus has always sought to generate. This chapter illuminates the nuanced relationship between the circus and the emerging science of electrical engineering during the nineteenth century.

With a focus on popular entertainments in Australia at the turn of the twentieth century, this article examines the aesthetic slippage that occurred between the circus and the variety theatre. Utilising the lens of science – or more particularly, popular science – it examines circus-style acts that either promoted recent scientific understanding, or that were received by audiences as evidence of scientifically structured human activity. By the end of the nineteenth century, circus owners defended their display of animals on the basis that they were guardians and promoters of new understanding in the field of natural history. Acts that promoted interest in animal intelligence and interspecies communication are identified as transferring from the circus to the variety theatre in Australia. Performances that reflected interest in human physiology and health sciences are similarly highlighted as originating at the circus and subsequently being sustained at the variety theatre. In the early years of the twentieth century extraordinary displays of human strength, speed and agility were positioned within the field of medical and health science by the owners of variety theatres and circuses. This article explores the ways that circus and the variety theatre mediated science for Australia’s popular audiences at the turn of the twentieth century. It contributes new understanding about ways the circus manifested and evolved in different regions at different times and responded to multiple social and industrial influences within its geographic context.