Regulated restlessness: museums, liberal government and the historical sciences

Abstract

This paper examines the role of the historical sciences (natural history, ethnology, archaeology and geology) in late-nineteenth-century programmes of liberal government. Why, over this period, did the historical sciences suggest themselves as useful for governing? Why were they accorded such importance within the civic and public education strategies of museums? Why and how did they come to eclipse the role that had earlier been accorded to art in these regards? It is argued that the answers to these questions consist in the intersection between three discursive events: first, the importance of Darwin's work in fashioning a version of nature that could be adapted to liberal programmes of social reform; second, the new disciplinary synthesis of geology, archaeology, natural history and ethnology which dominated the intellectual horizons of the late nineteenth century and which provided a new set of intersecting historical horizons within which to govern the conduct of individuals and populations; and, third, the changing problematics of late-nineteenth-century liberalism. The argument is developed by reviewing the changing emphases and priorities of museum practices in Britain, Australia and the USA.

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