The British Museum and the
Enlightenment: Collecting
Cultures
Mark Knights
Enlightenment values
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Desire to re-examine and question accepted ideas and values
Empirical
Light of reason
exploration
Liberation from ignorance, superstition and progress towards the
good life, knowledge, freedom, and improvement
• Encyclopedia of knowledge
• 1761 guide to the BM: ‘Learning was for many Ages in a manner
buried in Oblivion; a dark Ignorance spread itself over the face of the
whole Earth …Indeed numberless were the obstacles to the
Resurrection of Learning; a dark Ignorance, a blind Infatuation, an
obstinate Prejudice; yet so hard a matter is it to fetter the human
Mind, that it rose superior to all Difficulties. Literature is once more
recovered from its long swoon and now shines in its pristine Lustre;
nay, there are in these happy times many things generally known of
which the ancients had not the least notion; and many others by
them only guessed at, or known in Theory, which we have reduced
to a mathematical certainty. Nothing can conduce more to preserve
the Learning which the latter age abounds in, than having
Repositories in every nation to contain its Antiquities, such as is the
Museum of Britain.
Early Museums
• Cabinets of curiosities
• Ashmolean museum Oxford, 1683, founded by Elias
Ashmole building on collections of John Tradescant. One
German visitor in 1710 expressed his displeasure at the
presence of 'ordinary folk' in the Museum and surprise
that the collection survived their attentions, '... since the
people impetuously handle everything in the usual
English fashion and ... even the women are allowed up
here for sixpence; they run here and there, grabbing at
everything and taking no rebuff from the sub-custos'.
• Robert Hooke’s collection for the Royal Society
Sir Hans Sloane
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Physician; Fellow and President of
Royal Society; knew Locke and
Newton, and John Ray (naturalist)
and Linnaeus
Travelled to Jamaica 1688 and in
1707 and 1725 published a
Natural History of the island
His own collection incorporated
that of William Courten (museum
in the Middle Temple); his own
collection from Jamaica, West
Indies and thousands of gifts from
travellers. 200,000 items
Experimented with cocoa used by
natives of Jamaica; added milk,
enjoyed as a drink that he thought
aided digestion; the recipe
eventually passed to Cadbury’s.
Sloane’s will 1749/51
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Whereas from my youth I have been a great observer and admirer of the
wonderful power, wisdom and contrivance of the Almighty God, appearing in
the works of his creation, and have gathered together many things in my
own travels or voyages, or had them from others, especially my ever
honoured late friend William Courten Esq who spent the greatest part of his
life and estate in collecting such things, in and from most parts of the earth,
which he left me at his death … And whereas I have made great additions
of late years as well to my books, both printed as manuscript, and to my
collections of natural and artificial curiosities, precious stones, books of
dryed samples of plants, miniatures, drawings, prints, medals, and the like,
with some paintings concerning them .. now desiring very much that these
things tending many ways to the manifestation of the glory of God, the
confutation of atheism and its consequences, the use and improvement of
physic, and other arts and sciences, and benefit mankind, may remain
together and not be separated … where they may by the greatest
confluence of people be of most use … And I do hereby declare that it is my
desire and intention, that my said museum or collection be preserved and
kept and that the same may be from time to time, visited and seen by all
persons desirous of seeing and viewing the same, as well towards
satisfying the desire of the curious, as for the improvement, knowledge and
information of all persons’.
The Founding of the Museum
• 1753 Act of Parliament
• 1759 open. First national public museum.
• Additional collections including that of the
Duchess of Portland, Sir Joseph Banks,
Charles Townley, George III.
Sir Joseph Banks
• President of the Royal Society
• Naturalist aboard the Cook
expedition to the South Seas,
on board the Endeavour.
Amassed huge collection.
• ‘I may flatter myself that being
the first man of scientific
education who undertook a
voyage of discovery and that
voyage of discovery being the
first which turned out
satisfactorily in this
enlightened age, I was in some
measure the first who gave
that turn to such voyages’.
• Banks and Cook saw potential
of bread fruit on Tahiti – HMS
Bounty sent out to transport it
to Caribbean as food for slaves
• Promoted introduction of tea
from China to India and merino
sheep to Australia
What did it contain ?
• No distinction between arts
and sciences – library, natural
specimens, artefacts. Natural
History Museum and British
Library were from the original
collection.
• Library of George III – and the
Enlightenment Gallery is in the
King’s Library, designed in
1830s
• Sculpture – display of classical
statuary [insert Sir Rowland
Winn in the Library, Nostell
Priory] – impact of the grand
tour. 1816 Elgin Marbles.
The Classification of Knowledge
• John Ray: important in development of
systematic classification of natural world.
Collector. Notion of dividing plants and animals
into basic groups and a basic unit – but used
strings of Latin words
• Swedish Carl von Linné (Linnaeus): 1735
Systema Naturae set out classifications of
animals and minerals and ‘sexual system’ for
plants based on flowers and stamens. Two-word
name, the first describing the genus, the second
the species
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Fossils
Cleric Thomas Burnet at end of C17th
went on Grand Tour and saw Alps:
earth had to have been changed by
natural processes over long periods of
time; but still sought to reconcile this to
the Biblical account. Opened debate
about origin of earth which Bible put at
4004 BC.
John Woodward, Prof of Physick at
Gresham College, London, began
collecting fossils; Robert Hooke
distinguished minerals from
petrifactions and compared ammonites
to living molluscs. Woodward’s Essay
Towards a Natural History of the Earth
(1695) suggested that fossils were
once living creatures and could be
used to investigate the ancient history
of the earth. Noah’s Flood as the
explanation.
Edward Llwyd’s Lithiphylacii Britannici
Ichonographia (1699) mapped and
classified fossils, without reference to
the Bible.
Sloane collected minerals, including
those with pharmaceutical uses.
Earthquakes, Geology and
Paleontology
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‘Geology’ first used 1735
Sir William Hamilton arrived in Naples
in 1764 and became fascinated by
Vesuvius; it erupted 1765 and sent his
observations to Royal Society; 1776
published.
James Hutton; studied medicine;
modernising farmer; argued that new
rocks were formed by heat and fision,
uplifted, process of movement;
infinitely older earth. 1795 published.
No need for miracles.
William Smith, son of a blacksmith,
observed stratified rock in coal mines;
surveyor of Somerset Canal and found
fossils were in certain order depending
on layer of rock; rocks elsewhere
could be dated via the fossils they
contained. Published The
Stratigraphical System of Organised
Fossils (1817)
Dinosaurs
• Bones often found
• 1758 Mr Wooller found what
looked like a crocodile in cliffs
near Whitby; compared it with
living crocodiles and noted
differences; declared it to be
‘antedeluvian’
• At end of C18th remarkable
finds in cliff at Lyme Bay,
Dorset – Mary Anning
discovered an ichthyosaur,
plesiosaur and pterosaur
• Still Flood as explanation for
extinction
Discovery of British Antiquity
• c.1660 term archaeology used; study of the material remains of the
past.
• End of C17th discoveries of stone tools and ascribed by Dugdale
and Lhwyd to ancient Britons. Apothecary John Conyers found
hand-axe in 1690s with remains of an elephant in Grays Inn Lane –
acquired by Sloane.
• 1707 Society of Antiquaries; 1770 published proceedings as
Archaeologia
• Frenchman Mahudel described sequence of stone, bronze, iron
ages. By end of C18th acceptance of a pre-Roman Britain.
• Interest in Stonehenge – John Aubrey, then William Stukeley (vicar)
who published in 1740. Strong interest in Druids
• Late C18th romanticism of ancient patriot fighting the Romans
• Late C18th excavations eg Rev James Douglas in Kent describing
Anglo-Saxon finds
Classifying the ancient and artistic world
• Similar processes at work for antiquities though for a long time there
was very little ordering of displays – ordered by type
• 1719 Jonathan Richardson’s The Connnoisseur: An essay on the
whole art of Criticism: ‘to be a connoisseur a man must be as free
from all kinds of prejudice as possible’ and a clear way of reasoning,
with proof. He divided science of looking into 8 parts: composition,
colouring, handling, drawing, invention, expression, grace,
greatness, advantage, pleasure, and sublime. Visual taxonomy. Art
was linked to society; so art could be used to classify civilisations:
‘there is a history of the arts and sciences wherein it would be seen
to what heights some of the species have risen in some ages and
some countries, while at the same time on other parts of the globe,
men are but one degree above common animals’. So origins of art
were in Persia and Egypt, then perfected by the Greeks but lost after
the Romans.
• Johann Winckelmann applied this systematically to ancient art in his
History of 1764.
The East
• 1798 Napoleon hoped to capture Egypt; began
exploration. 1799 discovery of the Rosetta Stone allowed
deciphering of hieroglyphics (1801 handed over to GB
but 1824 by a Frenchman Champollion).
• 1813 published identification of Babylon by Claudius
Rich, and East India Company official based at Bagdad
to counter French designs on route to India; he spoke
Persian as well as many other languages; 1811
excavations there; 1821 Ninevah
• Stamford Raffles collector of Javanese objects; his
History of Java (1819)
• Chinese porcelain
Greek art
• Greek vases began to be
collected. Sir William Hamilton
collected 730.
• Influence on Wedgwood who
copied some of the designs.
‘The collection of Etruscan
vases in the British Museum
will ever be resorted to for the
finest models of elegant and
simple forms’
• Society of Dilletante 1734:
sponsored expedition to
Greece in 1750-3 for artists to
record monuments of Athens.
Scientific Instruments
• Old instruments such as astrolabes
• New ones such as orreries
• 1809 the object of a medical or anatomical
nature were hived off to the Hunterian
Museum, Glasgow.
• Public science
Religion
• Increased awareness of the variety of religious practices
• Idea of stages of religious worship: superstition to
rational enlightenment. Initial worship of fetishes or
animals; or the phallus [Richard Payne Knight, 1786]
• Non-Biblical religious texts eg 1785 Sir Charles Wilkins
published a translation of the Bhagavad Gita, the
sanskrit text; Ed Moor gave illustrated account of Indian
deities in Hindu Pantheon (1810)
• Idea of single common religious and cultural heritage
which, through migration and separation, had changed.
Ethnography
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Exploration encouraged the study of
peoples and their ways of life
Sloane collected 2000 objects;
1768 Cook set sail with Banks to
Pacific; encounter with Tahitians and
collection of objects, including bark
shield used by native Australians to
defend themselves vs Cook’s
voyagers. 7 May 1774 entry re
mourner’s dress.
1778-9 expedition by Cook to
Vancouver Island and Alaska
in 1780, after Capt Cook’s death, BM
opened a new South Seas room to
display the collections – the first
systematic display of such objects. Sir
Joseph Banks encouraged collecting
trips to the Americas and funnelled the
results to the BM.
1818 voyage to Northwest passage –
recording of the Inuit lifestyle, including
iglu.
Mexico after independence in 1819
Objects now displayed geographically
The Public
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The visitor experience
– Apply for a ticket
– 10,000 visitors 1774; 29,000 in 1810; 98,000 in 1822
– 1784 Trustees learnt that the majority of visitors were ‘mechanics and persons of
the lower class’
– Tour lasted 2 hours
– 1806 labelling systematically introduced
– In 1783 it was visted by Barthelemi Faujas de Saint-Fond, an eminent
French geologist and professor in the Museum of Natural History in
Paris: ‘The British Museum contains many valuable collections in
natural history, but nothing is in order, everything is out of its place; and
this assemblage appears rather as an immense magazine, in which
things have been thrown at random, rather than a scientific collection,
destined to instruct and honour a great nation’.
– The previous year the Germa Carl Philip Moritz had also visited: ‘The
company who saw it when and as I did, was various and some of all
sorts, and some, as I believe, of the lowest classeses of the people of
both sexes; for as it is the property of the Nation everyone has the same
right to see it that another has.’
Other contemporary sites
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Sir Ashton Lever’s museum opened in 1775 to paying public in Leicester
Square; In the 1760s and 1770s he had acquired an enormous collection of
birds, amongst other materials, which he displayed in the former royal
palace, Leicester House, 1775. As a friend of Captain James Cook, Lever
acquired exceptional Pacific ethnography, which was displayed alongside
the natural history collections in three rooms; he refused access to the
‘common people’
1810 William Bullock’s museum had 7000 ‘natural and foreign curiosities’
Royal Academy, first exhibition 1769; 1780 at Somerset House
Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufacture and Commerce,
1753
Royal Institution 1799, lecture room, for the ‘application of Science to the
common purposes of life’
Covent Garden Theatre 1732; Drury Lane Theatre (riot in 1744 over
proposed rise of ticket prices); Sadler’s Wells 1765; Academy of Music 1710
1787 Thomas Lord created Marylebone Cricket Club (1814 to its present
site).
1750 Westminster bridge
Tyburn for public executions
Shopping at Oxford Street and Picadilly
Lever Museum