Inca “Antiquities” in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Gänger
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
South American ◽  
Intellectual Curiosity ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Museum Exhibits ◽  
National Symbols ◽  
Antiquities Market

This chapter discusses different ways of engaging with the Inca as an ancient past and their material culture as “antiquities” over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It holds that Inca “antiquities” had assumed principally three distinct functions by the early nineteenth century, which they were to retain into the recent era: primarily, that of “epistemic things,” objects of intellectual curiosity to antiquaries and archaeologists in Europe and across the Americas; second, that of political, predominantly “national,” symbols, available for the wider imagined collectivities of, initially at least, several South American republics; and third, that of commodities, as collectibles and museum exhibits traded on an ever-expanding trans-Atlantic antiquities market.

Egypt’s Coptic Museum: From Patriarchal to National

2020 ◽  
pp. 181-204
Author(s):  
Dina Ishak Bakhoum
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Religious Nature ◽  
Egyptian History

This chapter traces the most significant episodes of the Coptic Museum’s history and argues that the museum was not founded as a ‘minority’ museum but rather as an archaeological museum holding valuable religious Coptic art. Its foundation aimed at demonstrating that Coptic material culture had equivalent value in Egyptian history to Pharaonic, Greco-Roman and Islamic arts, which in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries already had their own museums. Unlike other museums, however, the Coptic Museum was established under the aegis of the Patriarch, giving it an unconventional status within Egyptian heritage owing to the religious nature of its initial collection. The essay presents the museum’s foundation during the early nineteenth century and discusses the context of its nationalization and transformation into a public domain museum (1931) as well as its expansion (1947).

Slavery, Resistance(s) and Abolition in Early Nineteenth-Century Chile

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Mareite
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South American ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Emancipation ◽  
Proactive Role

Abstract Chile’s abolition of slavery (1823) has commonly been framed within a self-congratulatory narrative that emphasizes the philanthropic role of republican elites and the peaceful nature of slave emancipation. The traditional narrative not only views abolition as an ideologically inspired gift from the elites, but also underscores Chile’s exceptionalism vis-à-vis other South American emancipation processes—in Chile, unlike in the rest of the continent, the eradication of slavery was supposedly both politically and socially insignificant. This article challenges two of this narrative’s assumptions: first, that consensus characterized the abolition of slavery in Chile, and second, that abolition was simply a philanthropic concession from the new nation’s republican elites. Instead, this study highlights how officials, slaveholders and enslaved people transformed slavery and its dismantlement into a contested issue. It also explores the proactive role that enslaved people played in undermining the institution of slavery throughout Chile, ultimately leading to its abolition.

D.176: Sextants, numbers, and the Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Barford
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Bureaucratic Organization ◽  
Hierarchical Order ◽  
Hydrographic Surveying

In the 1830s and 1840s, the Hydrographic Office of the British Admiralty developed and oversaw one of the major state-run surveying projects of the nineteenth century. This involved a range of instruments whose circulation was increasingly regulated. Using extant museum collections and the correspondence of those involved, this article explores how such objects can be used to discuss both bureaucratic organization at a time of expanding government and the complex issues of sociability involved in hydrographic surveying. Surveying officers worked in a context in which the propriety of property on public service was a pervasive question. Instruments might be given as gifts between officers, appropriated as recompense, absorbed as state property, and disputed between friends. The ownership, provision, and treatment of instruments in particular could be used to demonstrate an officer’s peculiar zeal or institutional neglect. To those outside the ship, what was understood as over-instrumentation became amusing spectacle. On board, their use was part of a deeply hierarchical order of work in regions of colonial and mercantile importance. In examining the relationships around these instruments of survey, the paper proposes a richer understanding of the material culture of hydrography in the early nineteenth century.

The Highland Society of London, material culture and the development of Scottish military identity, 1798–1817*

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Watt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Symbol ◽  
The Military

Abstract The image of the Highland soldier as a brave, loyal warrior was central to nineteenth-century notions of Scottish national identity. This article uses material culture evidence alongside traditional archival sources to provide an interdisciplinary explanation of how the military dimension of Scottish identity was shaped in the early nineteenth century. It finds that it was the responses of the Highland Society of London to Scottish battlefield valour – rather than the actions themselves – that created the enduring popular perception of the Highland soldier as a desirable national symbol and as an icon of empire.

scholarly journals George IV’s Coronation as Festival

2022 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-235
Author(s):  
Danielle Kinsey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Modern Era

This article analyzes George IV’s coronation as a multisensory festive experience in order to understand the meanings of diamonds within British material culture in 1821. Reframing the coronation as a festival allows historical scholars to bridge the premodern/modern divide in early nineteenth-century historiography and demonstrates the ongoing centrality of festivals in consumer culture in the modern era. It also offers a vantage point from which to study sensory paradigm shifts and clashes that occurred in this context and evaluate diamonds in relation to other pieces of material culture outside of the confines of a formal marketplace. The article argues that the coronation shifted how diamonds were thought about in Britain, though this shift was subtle and deeply embedded in the turmoil of the moment. On a widespread scale, the event normalized the association of diamonds with monarchy, imperial power, and light, in ways that made diamonds seem like quotidian items. The article is based on accounts of the event in newspapers, periodicals, and official histories.

Material Culture in the Amateur Historical Associations of Early Nineteenth-Century Germany

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter N. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
The State ◽  
German History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Regional Associations

This chapter explores the ways amateur historical associations act as incubators of new thinking about how objects could tell stories. It draws from publications of German historical associations produced during the nineteenth century. Beginning in the first decade of the nineteenth century as a patriotic gesture and continuing for another fifty years, a new genre of German history flourished. It was often conducted at the scale of the region or territory, not the state, under the auspices of local historical associations and published in their newly created journals. In these regional associations, what had previously been a means to an end—material sources—became an end in itself: the subject matter of German history.

Sounding in silence: men, machines and the changing environment of naval discipline, 1796–1815

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES POSKETT
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Previous Experience ◽  
Scientific Instrument ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Important Shift

AbstractLogbooks and sea charts may appear rather straightforward evidence to present at a naval court martial. However, their introduction into proceedings in the early nineteenth century reveals an important shift. Measuring the depth of water soon became a problem both of navigation and of discipline. Indeed, Captain Newcomb's knowledge of the soundings taken at the Battle of the Basque Roads proved crucial at Lord Gambier's court martial in June 1809. Through a case study of Edward Massey's sounding machine, this paper reveals the close connection between disciplinary practices on land and at sea. The Board of Longitude acted as a key intermediary in this respect. By studying land and sea together, this paper better explains the changing make-up of the British scientific instrument trade in this period. Massey is just one example of a range of new entrants, many of whom had little previous experience of the maritime world. More broadly, this paper emphasizes the role of both environmental history and material culture in the study of scientific instruments.

scholarly journals At home in that 'gay bathing place'; or, representing Brighton in the early nineteenth century

Romantik ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Kate Scarth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Intellectual Curiosity ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
Home Life ◽  
Urban Renaissance ◽  
Physical Mobility ◽  
Future Work ◽  
The Town

Historians have established late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Brighton’s role in the urban renaissance by tracking its emergence as a centre of fashion, polite sociability, and consumerism. Other versions of the town, such as domestic experiences and home life, have, however, been neglected. Yet in the early nineteenth century, contemporaries increasingly present a version of Brighton that is domestic and retired instead of public; polite instead of fashionable; rational instead of dissipated; intimate rather than crowded; more country and nature-orientated than urban focused. This article explores how Elizabeth Sandham’s didactic novel, Sketches of Young People; or, a Journey to Brighton (1822), negotiates this transition. It moreover argues for the empowering possibilities that this new Brighton offers middle-class women in terms of satisfying intellectual curiosity and facilitating physical mobility. While Brighton’s history has been explored, this article calls for future work into the cultural, including literary, representations of romantic-period Brighton.

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