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SUMMARY:Slavery in the cabinet of curiosities: Hans Sloane's Atlantic worl
 d - James Delbourgo (McGill University and Visiting Fellow\, CRASSH)
DTSTART:20080529T153000Z
DTEND:20080529T170000Z
UID:TALK11571@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Lauren Kassell
DESCRIPTION:The history of science has rarely if ever explored the links b
 etween making natural knowledge and the practice of African slavery in the
  early modern era. Science and slavery would seem to have represented oppo
 site extremes of hierarchies of work and skill: the agency of rational ing
 enuity versus the regimented command of productive hands and bodies. By th
 e eighteenth century\, figurative chains of being contrasted the apex of N
 ewtonian genius with the nadir of 'Hottentot savagery'. The varied career 
 of the naturalist-collector Hans Sloane (1660-1753) provides a rich opport
 unity to explore how worlds of slavery and science were\, however\, connec
 ted rather than separate. Best known for assembling the collection of natu
 ral specimens and artificial curiosities that formed the basis of the Brit
 ish Museum\, Sloane spent fifteen months in Jamaica during 1687-1689 and\,
  in the aftermath of this voyage\, appears to have become the first person
  in western Europe to collect\, preserve and describe artefacts pertaining
  specifically to slavery: nooses and whips to discipline and execute Afric
 ans\; their musical instruments and culinary utensils\; clothing and weapo
 nry used by Maroon rebels in Jamaica\; and also African human remains\, in
 cluding skin\, foetal and genital material. Sloane thus anticipated abolit
 ionist campaigners later in the century\, who collected and displayed the 
 instruments of enslavement. His career invites exploration of how slavery 
 was made public through objects of curiosity well before abolitionist deba
 tes made such artefacts triggers of political concern. The paper aims to r
 aise several related questions: how slavery both supported the practice of
  natural science and stimulated thinking about 'race'\; how natural histor
 y's regimes of collection\, description and preservation enabled invisible
  instruments of economic utility to become visible objects of curiosity an
 d\, ultimately\, politics\; and how enslaved African agency both made and 
 contested knowledge in the Atlantic world.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, History and Philosophy of Science\, Department o
 f
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