Material Legacies of Empire

Tracing the Stories of Colonial-era Collections in Britain's Museums

Thousands of objects across museums in Britain were brought to this country as a result of the expanding British Empire. Throughout the colonial era, administrators, doctors, teachers, missionaries, sailors and soldiers (among many others) accumulated objects from local communities around the world and donated or sold them to British museums.

Numerous objects were looted and stolen as part of military campaigns, while others were coercively extracted from their owners. Some were purchased, or received as gifts, but were nonetheless acquired against the backdrop of the unequal power dynamics of colonialism. In the present day, such objects are naturally the subject of scrutiny by communities from which they originate. But there is still much work to be done to uncover the histories of how such material was collected.

Dr Sarah Longair, who is an Associate Professor in Lincoln's School of Humanities and Heritage, is directly addressing these questions through extensive archival research and object study. "Many objects arrived in museums with little or no context about their acquisition and scant details about the communities from which they came," explains Dr Longair. "These narratives have the potential to reveal much about the everyday imposition of colonial power, and the agency and resistance of colonised peoples in the formation of museum collections."

Colonial Collecting

The focus of Dr Longair’s most recent research project is British colonial collecting in the Indian Ocean and in particular its islands in order to understand these processes better. 

This research has revealed the critical role of a host of previously unrecognised local islanders in the amassing of such material, including formerly enslaved Africans. While rarely named, it is clear that these individuals provided essential assistance to colonial collectors. Others resisted or carefully controlled the actions of collectors. The islands' environments also influenced collecting in myriad ways.

"The focus on islands and the smaller places of empire draws our attention to these lesser known sites of colonial rule," says Dr Longair. "Islands such as Zanzibar, Seychelles, and the Maldives are better known today as tourist attractions, yet all were drawn into the orbit of the British Empire in the nineteenth century, and important and revealing collections formed there."

Teaching the Histories of Empire

Object histories not only provide essential information about the provenance of museum collections but also represent powerful opportunities for teaching and learning about the British Empire. The Black Lives Matter protests and the removal of the Colston statue in Bristol have brought widespread attention to the material legacies of empire. 

Dr Longair’s teaching at Lincoln as well as her outreach work with schools demonstrates clearly how audiences of all ages can engage with complex histories of empire through the stories of objects. Teachers and pupils alike engage eagerly with object histories, one teacher observing how inclusive this material approach is, and commenting that 'it feels like proper history'.

Banner Image: Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Geni, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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