HIST 445 - The Eighteenth Century Genesis of The British Museum

While modern history may not be my main area of study, Museology is a great passion of mine.  The British Museum is my favourite museum in the world and it does not escape me the role empire played in its growth. The nineteenth century saw the greatest influx of growth for the Museum, with collectors from all of the Empire making great donations. In John MacKenzie's book, Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities he highlights the importance of these collectors: “Everywhere, surveyors and geologists, explorers and botanists turned into collectors and suppliers of specimens to museums.” (MacKenzie, 3).  He also draws the correlation between specimen and trophy during this time (MacKenzie, 3). This connection speaks to the attitudes of the imperial collector, which is something I hope to address in my paper.
The British Museum's website gives an informative account of its creation in 1759 housed in a seventeenth century mansion known as Montagu House and the collector whose donations brought about the opening of the Museum.  That donor was a collector, naturalist and physician named Sir Hans Sloane. 

 Source: britishmuseum.org

Collectors of curiosities was in fashion in Europe for centuries preceding the dawn of the empire, but these were often private collections kept in cabinets in one's home, only viewed by company.  The advent of the public museum would go from taking one's personal acquisitions and showing them to those in their social circle, to the British government acquiring specimens from around their growing sphere of control around the world and exhibiting it to the people on a much broader scale.  I can't help but draw the ancient Roman comparison of taking the spoils of war as trophies, presenting them to the public during a Triumphal pompa (procession) and then displaying them for the Roman people to see in public areas such as a porticus or in the ironic example of the Forum of Peace where the spoils of the war with Judea were displayed. 

 The South Front of the British Museum circa 1857, Photo by Roger Fenton Source: britishmuseum.org

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Bibliographical Sources

MacKenzie, John M. Museums and Empire: History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009.

Britishmuseum.org

Claridge, Amanda. Rome: An Oxford Archeological Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.