Collecting artefacts, acquiring empire

Abstract

This paper uses collections and collecting activity to explore the relationship between Enlightenment thinking and practice in the early-nineteenth century and the Darwinist sciences that underpinned late-nineteenth-century British imperialism. It takes a long-term view on the changing cultural meaning of three Inupiat artefacts and the motivations behind the actions of the two nineteenth-century British individuals who collected and owned them. Sir Edward Belcher collected them from their original communities in the 1820s as part of the Enlightenment mission of scientific discovery championed by Sir Joseph Banks and John Barrow. He donated three items to Sir John Lubbock in 1867 who also purchased a further selection in 1872 when Belcher sold his collection at public auction. Lubbock incorporated these items into a larger personal reference collection and utilized them within the context of this wider collection to provide authentic ‘proof’ for his Darwinist theories about prehistoric archaeology, ethnography and cultural evolution that were used to justify imperial activity in late-nineteenth-century Britain.

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