scholarly journals British Material Diplomacy in Precolonial Uganda: The Gift Exchanges of John Hanning Speke, 1860-1863

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-174
Author(s):  
Alison Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Gift Exchanges ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Published Account

Summary In recent decades the interdisciplinary study of elite gift exchange in various geographical and temporal contexts has transformed historians’ understanding of colonial diplomacy. By combining analysis of textual, visual and material sources with theoretical approaches to material culture and gift exchange from anthropology, scholars have increasingly come to examine colonial diplomacy not only through the high-politics and text-based operations of bureaucrats in imperial metropoles, but also as a material and cultural project operating through the local and personal. This essay uses the published account of John Hanning Speke (1863) and his descriptions of ‘gift exchanges’ in present-day Uganda to understand the materiality of early British diplomacy there. As Speke was the first Briton to reach Uganda, it examines how gift exchanges impacted the logistics and outcomes of his visit. Re-examining his text this way reveals the importance of material knowledge, performance and exchange in early cross-cultural encounters in the region.

Commerce and Consumers: The Ubiquitous Chest of the Late Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-404
Author(s):  
Katherine Anne Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thing Theory ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

Contrary to their ubiquity within written, visual, and material sources, chests have largely remained overlooked in studies of the late Middle Ages. Bill Brown’s “thing theory” helps to explicate the ways in which chests can transform from unnoticed “things” in the background to meaningful “objects” when viewed through their entanglements with commercial, consumer, political, and moral concerns. The interdisciplinary study of chests in the late Middle Ages brings together a range of evidence including inventories, guild accounts, court pleas, contemporary writings, images, and material culture from Burgundy, France, and England.

Modeling Complex Cultural Encounters in Contact and Colonial Greenland, 1690–1900

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Andreas Toft
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Interaction Model ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Glass Beads ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Main Motivation ◽  
New Material ◽  
The Cross

In the wake of European whaling and the presence of Danish colonists and missionaries, the Greenlandic Inuit were facing not only foreign people but also a new material culture in the form of European commodities between 1690 and 1900. Trade was the main motivation for these cultural encounters, but the nature and duration of local encounters affected Inuit use and reception of foreign things. This cultural exchange cannot be reduced to the simple dichotomy of Inuit and Europeans. Many groups were involved on both sides, and foreign commodities were accompanied by Europeans in some areas, whereas Inuit groups acted as middlemen in others. This chapter discusses the applicability of the Cross-Cultural Interaction Model to complex Contact and Colonial encounters based on the cultural biographies of glass beads, barrel hoops, and iron objects transformed into ulos (women’s knives) in the Historic Thule Culture.

Ceramic-ware along the Ancient Silk Trade Route—A Short Study of Cross-Cultural Influences on Product Form

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-97
Author(s):  
Ravi Mokashi Punekar ◽  
◽  
Shiva Ji ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Product Form ◽  
Ceramic Ware ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Silk Route ◽  
Trade Route ◽  
Multiple Domains ◽  
Trading Routes

The exchange of goods and materials by way of trading and exchanges were common in ancient times between India and China via silk route and other trading routes. The movement of people from one place to another brought exchange of not only materials but also techniques and processes and helped to establish their own manufacturing facilities and craftsmanship. This has resulted into a cross-cultural influence over the craft forms as reflected in many resemblances of material culture, annotations and apologies seen in various forms and shapes in multiple domains such as ceramic pottery, glazed pottery, metalware, ship buildings, printing, silk and other fabrics, patterns and motifs etc. Observations of ancient remains from Belitung and artifacts from Indian cities along secondary and tertiary Silk routes, show significant influence in the similarities in techniques, materials, surface treatments, kiln processes, colors, motifs , etc. This paper examines a cross-cultural resemblance of product form factor between Changsha pottery and pots to ceramic ware from eastern parts and metalware from western regions of India like Gujarat and Rajasthan. The spread of Buddhism from India to China and other eastern and south eastern countries during this period must also form a strong reason for this cultural exchange.

South Sea Tales

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Louis Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Global Culture ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
South Sea ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Subject Material

The literary world was shocked when in 1889, at the height of his career, Robert Louis Stevenson announced his intention to settle permanently on the Pacific island of Samoa. His readers were equally shocked when he began to use the subject material offered by his new environment, not to promote a romance of empire, but to produce some of the most ironic and critical treatments of imperialism in nineteenth-century fiction. In these stories, as in his work generally, Stevenson shows himself to be a virtuoso of narrative styles: his Pacific fiction includes the domestic realism of ‘The Beach at Falesé, the folktale plots of ‘The Bottle Imp’ and ‘The Isle of Voices’, and the modernist blending of naturalism and symbolism in The Ebb-Tide. But beyond their generic diversity the stories are linked by their concern with representing the multiracial society of which their author had become a member. In this collection - the first to bring together all his shorter Pacific fiction in one volume - Stevenson emerges as a witness both to the cross- cultural encounters of nineteenth-century imperialism and to the creation of the global culture which characterizes the post-colonial world.

Metal burial: Understanding caching behaviour and contact material culture in Australia's NE Kimberley

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-52
Author(s):  
Sam Harper ◽  
Ian Waina ◽  
Ambrose Chalarimeri ◽  
Sven Ouzman ◽  
Martin Porr ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Contact Material ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Burials

This paper explores identity and the recursive impacts of cross-cultural colonial encounters on individuals, cultural materials, and cultural practices in 20th-century northern Australia. We focus on an assemblage of cached metal objects and associated cultural materials that embody both Aboriginal tradition and innovation. These cultural materials were wrapped in paperbark and placed within a ring of stones, a bundling practice also seen in human burials in this region. This ‘cache' is located in close proximity to rockshelters with rich, superimposed Aboriginal rock art compositions. However, the cache shelter has no visible art, despite available wall space. The site shows the utilisation of metal objects as new raw materials that use traditional techniques to manufacture a ground edge metal axe and to sharpen metal rods into spears. We contextualise these objects and their hypothesised owner(s) within narratives of invasion/contact and the ensuing pastoral history of this region. Assemblage theory affords us an appropriate theoretical lens through which to bring people, places, objects, and time into conversation.

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