Colonialism and the museum

Introduction:

This display on the D-floor of the building was put together by Rebecca Ford, a Science Communications Student at the University of Sheffield (2020), for her Master's project.

The project was titled "Addressing colonialism within the University of Sheffield’s Zoological Teaching Museum" and looked into the historical context of the Alfred Denny Museum in regards to colonialism, with the aim to consider natural science and its relation with colonialism more broadly as well as contributing to the Contextualising the Curriculum initiative within the University of Sheffield School of Bioscience.

It highlights the interconnected history between the development of the museum collection and the expansion of the British Empire, emphasising the need to consider the political, social and cultural context of natural history collections like our museum, as well as related science.

Information is broken into 4 sections which relate to the display cabinet pictured below, providing more details on the items featured.

Our Lost History
Retracing Empire
Natural Science, Colonialism, and Imperialism
A Case for Equitable Science

All information here is taken directly from the transcripts of Rebecca's audio guide and dissertation report with some minor editing to suit a digital webpage display.

D-floor display which contains: a Victorian-era (1858) map of the world with pins marking the colonial origins of some species from the museum- red pins indicate British Colonies, the yellow marking wider European Colonies. Information boards providing context to the different elements of the project, a series of skulls of different animals from across the world, and a section of ship's hull damaged by shipworm.

Our Lost history

When looking to find out more about colonialism and its ties to the museum it is first important to consider what we know about the history of the Alfred Denny museum.

Unfortunately, one of the unique things about Alfred Denny Museum is actually the lack of records on the specimens and also somewhat on Alfred Denny himself. Although we’re not completely in the dark on either account. During the WW2 bombings in Sheffield a lot of the collection history of the specimens were destroyed so we do not know a lot about who or exactly where the specimens come from.

Thankfully the lack of data hasn’t really been a hindrance to the functioning of the museum because it is used primarily for as a scientific teaching museum so instead of primarily public facing or research purposes, it is mostly used for observing in detail in the features and evolutionary relationships of the specimens and teaching students, which can very well happen without the collection records.

This intention for a teaching museum was described by Alfred Denny in 1898 a few years before he founded the ADM where he presented the benefits to the museums association in Sheffield City Hall. Denny’s intentions have been upheld as the primary function of the museum to this day.

As mentioned there is a gap in the records and information on Alfred Denny. What we do know is that he probably drew ideas and inspiration from different people and connections around him, especially from his father (Henry Denny) and used that for the Alfred Denny Museum collections- which shows how scientific resources can, and usually are built upon social interactions and networks.

We know that Alfred Denny was born in Leeds and grew up there with his father Henry Denny who was a prominent entomologist and curator, and was very prolific curator of Leeds city Museum in its first form which was a private museum for the Leeds literary and philosophical society. This included a lot of colonial materials from Australia, India and parts of Africa, one example is that Henry Denny was particularly interested in Tasmanian tigers and he was rumoured to have more than the Natural History Museum. You'll find a skull of one in the display cabinet but these animals have now gone extinct partly due to museum’s requesting so many.

Alfred Denny's life seems to mimic that of his fathers in some respects, in that Alfred Denny was also an entomologist and obviously a museum creator although the museums did have different functions.

Denny came to Sheffield in his late twenties as a professor of biology which is when he became a member of the Sheffield literary and philosophical society and was made a member of the Linnean society by recommendation of Henry Clifton Sorby, a famous biologist and geologist who donated the lantern slides found downstairs to the museum. Alfred became a professor of zoology in 1905, this was also allegedly thanks to his connections with Henry Clifton Sorby who was president of Firth court around the the University of Sheffield was beginning to be established and the Museum founded.

A quick note on Literary and Philosophical Societies, these were very common across the country and would often have private museum collections and receive donations from often wealthy locals who acquired a lot of colonial materials; it was very common for the society to be made up of scientists and science enthusiasts. Henry Denny was a member of Leeds Literary and Philosophical Society whose museum became Leeds City Museum and Alfred Denny in the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society whose collection became Weston Park Museum.

We don't exactly know how or if the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society tied into Alfred Denny Museum although we do have some specimens allegedly that are from Weston park museum which was born from the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society private collection. One connection of note could be Elijah Howarth curator of Western Park Museum and a member of Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society. There are records indicating Alfred Denny and Elijah Howarth admired one another's work but we know little more than that.

Whilst the collection records of most of the specimens is lost we do have some information available, for example we know that Alfred Denny went to Germany to request commercial teaching specimens, this could be inspired by Sorby who spoke German and travelled there many times for scientific purposes.

Both Denny's shared contacts between each other, as mentioned before Elijah Howarth, and also Vaclav Fric from Prague who was a very popular commercial natural history dealer. As was Gerrard and Sons from England - a private company focused on taxidermy and skeletal reconstruction of an assortment of animals. A fair few of our specimens came from Gerrard and Sons, purchased soely for the museum. They also had contacts with people in the British Museum which they used to obtain duplicate specimens and would request animals after they passed away in local zoos which is what Henry Denny did in Leeds. The origins of a lot of these animals would have probably been colonial. There are also specimens from discovery expeditions in our collection such as the Henry Seebohm birds from Asia and some marine specimens from the Challenger expedition from Fiji.

We can see from this how colonialism was ingrained into Alfred Denny’s life through the window of the museum how scientists and wider society around Europe are able to profit intellectually and financially from this colonial history.

2. Retracing Empire

The map on the display is one that was drawn around the time Alfred Denny was born and marks some of the colonies that the specimens in the ADM are from. The red pins represent specimens from what were once British colonies and the yellow pins represent European colonies more widely. Because of the lack of data this is only a small sample of the entire collection. Imagine each pin represents an animal that has a history attached to it that unfortunately in many cases is lost.

An interesting example where we know the history attached to the specimen is the Ram’s horn squid from Fiji. The specimen was collected from the Challenger expedition which was a collaboration between the Biological Royal Society and the British Military; a fairly common collaboration but this was the first endeavour where scientific progress was the main focus. The Challenger expedition was a 4 year expedition that sailed around the world but mainly to the British colonies and is attributed to sparking modern oceanography, sometimes referred to as the moon landing for English Victorians. The Challenger was a warship with labs retrofitted onto it, and one vein of thought is that the political motivations behind this was to respond to other European countries e.g. Germany/Netherlands which were asserting their own colonial powers in the global south.

It is important to acknowledge that even in the ADM where we do not have our records for most of the specimens there are still very evidently traces of Empire because it is ingrained into our systems.

3. Natural Science, Colonialism, and Imperialism

This section aims to illustrate how biology is often political and social by looking at the history and philosophy of biology and how these two things affect our lives possibly more than we realise.

When looking at the relationship between natural history museums, science, imperialism and colonialism its apparent that links go back quite a long way. For example; we could look at colonialism from the 1500s as the Spanish and British invaded North America - this could be described as what sparked the European legacy, justification, and legitimisation of Empire, and this way of thinking has continued to the present day remaining incredibly relevant to systems in place now. Around that time the view in Britain generally was that nature was a divine right that served men. Move to the scientific revolution and there was an increasing view that nature was instead something to be observed, categorised, and controlled- beloning to man.

This ties into the justification of empire and colonialism which involves philosophical thinking. Lets look to the Enlightenment, sparked by the scientific revolution, a time where people were reckoning with what it means to be a person and how to progress, indeed what even is progress. This ties into the Victorian ideal of self improvement through gaining knowledge which is around the time a lot of museums were being established and filled with knowledge on the world but mainly the colonies.

Going back to the Enlightenment, whilst the ideas aren’t monolithic and weren't representative of every single person at the time there was this idea of progress and civilisation that Europeans can bring to the colonies. A recent survey in Britain reflects this view from the enlightenment and is distilled in the words of Rudyard Kipling "It is the burden of the white man to bring civilization to the colonies".

A small slight tangent is that Kant, seen as the poster child of the Enlightenment, declared that the motto for this movement should be "Sapere Aude" Latin for "Dare to Know" and this is the motto used by Science Learning Partnerships which was primarily made up of scientists and science enthusiasts.

For scientists this idea of progress ties to the 1800s with the rise of taxonomy and scientific observation and exploitation of resources. We have Darwin’s letters to Henry Denny discussing research to see if humans can be divided into different species by their race because different ‘races’ have different lice. Whilst the scientific intention behind this specifically may be apolitical the social impact of race science plays into imperialism and the legitimisation of it. And that collection can now be found at the Oxford Natural History Museum and is currently being researched there.

In many senses science and imperialism went hand-in-hand, it was the relationship where one makes the other more powerful. For example research in and around the colonies was used to improve control over the resources in the colonies and it was also contributed to advancements in science. One example of this is shipworm - museums would be paid to collect and research the specimens to this case to combat them because shipworms are bivalves would eat away at the wood of ships which were vital for colonialism. (See section of ships hull on display)

We have trophy heads of buffalo in our museum. Several collections for natural history museums originate from upper-class private collections from hunting trips in the colonies and there's been research looking at one of the origins of conservation as a discipline in the West focused on preserving animals for the specific purpose of preserving game for hunting. Allegedly the first British conservation group to be founded was the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire in 1903 which still exists today, called Flora and Fauna International. This group was made up of biologists, hunters, and aristocrats. We think about fortress conservation and how this could have stemmed from colonialism and how hunting became legitimate for wealthy foreigners and illegitimate for locals who relied on it for subsistence.

There was also the matter of economics. Science and economics have always been intertwined in our society. This is shown most clearly, but not only, in the commercial natural history trade and natural history dealers. A few examples of these are on display, sepcifically the thylacine skull which was valued as a rare commodity. These buisnesses provided for museums across Europe in huge quantities with specimens from across the globe. As mentioned earlier, natural history museums and scientific research have a close relationship too.

Natural history museums tie together many different disciplines: obviously history, nature, and science but also philosophy, economics, politics, ethics and many more. It's all very much intertwined and can be an interesting lens to view the ways in which scientific research in the pursuit of knowledge or progress doesn't happen in a vacuum, it is done by people who exist in the world in their own time periods.

To conclude there is no one single correct truth to be had about the past and we just can extrapolate from what was recorded and try to steer away from misinformation, and hope to bring history to life with our own perspective that applies to us today. People who produce scientific knowledge must acknowledge that our ways of knowing, our ways of thinking are influenced by the past and that obviously play into science, it’s a complex relationship but we could say that scientific knowledge is a product of what we care about as people, it is intertwined with social issues e.g. there’s a popular saying that ‘science isn’t finished until it’s communicated’ .

4. A Case for Equitable Science

Building on all of this there’s a movement (and has been for a while) to decolonise science. Whether it’s in universities, in research groups, and even in the field, there's been a big push to do this kind of work to reckon with systems that perpetuate inequality and harm. It's important to recognise actions and solutions devised by people on what they can to help issues created by the legacy of colonialism.

There’s been a push for change here in the University of Sheffield. People in the School of Biosciences and across other departments have worked to provide a more representative curriculum for students; teaching associates have been auditing their modules to include information that is more reflective of the reality of colonialism and acknowledging the often racist, colonialist views of scientist who we herald as pioneers- such as Darwin. A lab group was set up focused on assessing papers and picking out imperialist or colonial ideology from papers, both past and present. This group ran a wider reading group, open to all members across the school of biosciences encouraging the inclusion of a critique of colonialism as a topic for dissertations and literature reviews and PhD’s in the biosciences.

This diagram from the display case is just to inspire possible avenues for the future and it’s modified from a very interesting paper on decolonising ecology but has elements that are transferable to other fields and something to reflect upon how it can influence your work. Knowing our history, prioritising accessibility, accepting there is more than one way of knowing, working in inclusive teams and environments. All of these things have limitations and pitfalls but are important to consider and put into practice where possible.

When thinking about different ways of knowing and understanding the world we can consider there are many impacts of colonialism we can think on. For example the European monolithic way of thinking and alienation of all who think differently which helps perpetuate racism and racist stereotypes. And so in that there’s the alienation of people of colour but there’s also self-alienation of people who perpetuate racism and there’s a self-dehumanisation from dehumanising others which perhaps acts as a block to taking action to helping others. When looking at references for this idea of self-dehumanisation a couple of the papers were referencing South African Bantu philosophy - an idea along the lines of ‘when I hurt someone else it hurts my own humanity so why would I hurt my own humanness’. This philosophy can be used to motivate actions to fix inequalities. By bettering our view of other people and accepting a diversity of cultures and views, we better ourselves.

Display case specimens

A list of the skulls included in the display with additional information about their origin where available.

The cabinet also includes a piece of wood from the hull of a trade ship damaged by a relative of Teredo navalis shipworm, used to highlight the indirect impacts of colonialism via the introduction of invasive species such as shipworm and ship-timber beetles which caused large damage to wooden structures. Other invasive species such as rats, pigs and cats can wreck havoc on local ecosystems and drive the extinction of native endemic species, as is the case of the Dodo.

South Asian river dolphin Platanista gangetica skull. The precise location the skull was taken from is not known however, it can be assumed it was taken from the Ganges or related South Asian rivers based on their geographic range.
African Lion Panthera leo skull. African Lions are classified as vulnerable and have lost much of their historic range
Oceanic dolphin skull - unknown species of the family Delphinidae.
Linnaeus’s two-toed sloth Choloepus didactylus skull from Brazil
Tapir Tapirus sp. skull from South America
Common Warthog Phacochoerus africanus skull from Sub-saharan Africa
Thylacine (also known as the Tasmanian tiger) Thylacinus cynocephalus skull. The thylacine is now extinct owing to excess hunting from European colonialists, the species trade to supply museums with skins and skeletons as well as other factors like habitat destruction and disease. This skull potentially came from Henry Denny, Alfred's father and curator of Leeds City Museum, who was fascinated with the thylacine and reportedly owned a private collection larger than that of the Natural History Museum.
Western Gorilla Gorilla gorilla skull from Cameroon brought from a British natural history dealer working at E.Gerrard and Sons Osteologists and Taxidermists company
Bear Ursidae skull, species unknown
Tiger Panthera tigris skull from Asia
Dugong Dugong dugon skull from the Pacific or Indian Ocean
Female Bactrian Camel Camelus bactrianus skull from Arabia, collected in 1951
Leopard Panthera pardus skull
Great hornbill Buceros bicornis bill section, taken from the forests of Southeast Asia
Atlantic puffin Fratercula arctica
Tawny Owl Strix aluco
Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs
Mute swan Cygnus olor
Cod Gadus sp.
Bowfin Amia calva from North America
Porcupine fish Diodon sp. From Misaki, Japan
Japanese grass pufferfish Takifuga niphobles from Misaki, Japan
Mekong pufferfish Pao suvattii from the Mekong River in Myanmar (Burma)
Domestic Dog Canis familiaris domesticus skull
Domestic ferret Mustela putorius furo skulls

This project brings a lot to think about, and we encourage you to take your time with this information and remember there is no single correct way to look at it.

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