ENDNOTES Empire in a Glass Case: The Diaspora of Atlantic Artifacts in the British Museum
Vague Vocabularies and Victorious Collectors
The western world is accustomed to dialogues surrounding property rights, especially within the context and language of settler colonialism. There is, however, very little conversation about property and objects of cultural significance in the same manner. Sacred, royal, or powerful objects are “equally inalienable,” to the extent that they cannot be freely given away.1 The museum is built on the foundation of material culture, where the concept of ‘the gift’ and ‘acquisition’ have been embedded into the infrastructure of the museum since its Enlightenment inception. Today, many museum scholars and anthropologists would agree that it is “to our collective disciplinary and professional shame” that no similar theory of “looting, plunder, dispossession has been written.”2 A central function of militarist colonialism, looting and pillaging of objects were ways in which Victorian Europeans amassed collections to fill their museums, justified empire, and propagandised ‘race science.’ The very first example of this was the British Museum, founded in 1753 as the first national public, secular museum in the world. Today, it houses an estimated eight million artefacts, making it one of the largest museums of classical antiquities.3 In its mission statement, the British Museum states that “[t]he Museum’s aim is to hold a collection representative of world cultures and to ensure that the collection is housed in safety, conserved, curated, researched and exhibited.”4 This collection is one born from the violence of colonialism, beginning with Sir Hans Sloane, an Irish physician who began amassing his collection in 1687, when he served as physician to the colonial governor in Jamaica. While on the island, enslaved Africans assisted Sloane in his collection of 800 plant and animal specimens.5 Sloane returned to Britain with his newly acquired collectables. He continued to add to his collection, using profits from sugar plantations to amass more items.6 He purchased items from other travellers and ‘explorers,’ eventually filling his two homes with 32,000 coins and medals, 50,000 books and manuscripts, 334 pressings of dried plants, and much more.7 One of the first items proven to be of African origin that was acquired from the Sloane collection is a drum, one that was found in the colony of Virginia. According to the Sloane register records, this drum was described as “Indian.” It is listed as item 1368, and detailed as “an Indian drum made of a hollowed tree carved, the top being brac’d [sic] with peggs [sic] and thongs, wt [sic] the bottom hollow, from Virginia, by Mr Clerk.”8 The drum is goblet shaped, made of wood, deer or antelope skin, and corn. It is decorated on the lower half with a series of carved notches, designs Drum, Ghana, ca. 1753, camwood and deer skin, 24 × 41 cm. The British Museum, Fair use.
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