Reinventing Africa : museums, material culture, and popular imagination in late Victorian and Edwardian England
Between 1890 and 1918, British colonial expansion in Africa led to the removal of many valuable African artifacts that were subsequently brought to Britain and displayed. Annie Coombes argues that this activity had profound repercussions for the construction of a national identity within Britain itself - the effects of which are still with us today
Coombes argues that although endlessly reiterated racial stereotypes were disseminated through popular images of all things 'African', this was no simple reproduction of imperial ideology. There were a number of different and sometimes conflicting representations of 'Africa' and of what it was to be African - representations that varied according to political, institutional and disciplinary pressures. In particular, the professionalisation of anthropology over this period played a crucial role in the popularisation of contradictory ideas about African culture to a mass public. Pioneering in its interdisciplinary research, this book offers valuable insights for art and design historians, historians of culture, imperialism and anthropology, social historians, anthropologists and museologists
Bibliographic Information
| Format: | Book |
|---|---|
| Author: | Coombes, Annie E, |
| Subject: |
Material culture National characteristics, British Public opinion Museums |
| Publication Year: | 1994 |
| Language: | English |
| Published: | New Haven : Yale University Press, 1994. |
| ISBN: | 9780300068900 0300068905 |
| Notes: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 259-275) and index. 1. Material Culture at the Crossroads of Knowledge: The Case of the Benin 'Bronzes' -- 2. Voices in the Wilderness: Critics of Empire -- 3. Aesthetic Pleasure and Institutional Power -- 4. The Spectacle of Empire 1: Expansionism and Philanthropy at the Stanley and African Exhibition -- 5. The Spectacle of Empire 2: Exhibitionary Narratives -- 6. Temples of Empire: The Museum and its Publics -- 7. Containing the Continent: Ethnographies on Display -- 8. 'For God and For England': Missionary Contributions to an Image of Africa -- 9. National Unity and Racial and Ethnic Identities: The Franco-British Exhibition of 1908 -- Epilogue: Inventing the 'Post-Colonial' |
| Course: |
HIST250 |
Availability at HKSYU Library
| Location | Call number | Status |
|---|---|---|
| English Book (5/F) | 960.07441 COO 1994 | Available |