Distributed for UCL Press
The India Museum Revisited
A full examination of the India Museum’s founding manifesto and evolving ambitions.
The museum of the East India Company formed, for a large part of the nineteenth century, one of the sights of London. In recent years, little has been remembered of it beyond its mere existence, while an assumed negative role has been widely attributed to it on the basis of its position at the heart of one of Britain’s arch-colonialist enterprises.
Extensively illustrated, The India Museum Revisited surveys the contents of its multi-faceted collections—with respect to materials, their manufacture, and original functions on the Indian sub-continent—as well as the collectors who gathered them and the manner in which they were mobilized to various ends within the museum.
From this integrated treatment of documentary and material sources, a more accurate, rounded, and nuanced picture emerges of an institution that contributed in major ways, over a period of eighty years, to the representation of India for a European audience, not only in Britain but through the museum’s involvement in the international exposition movement to audiences on the continent and beyond.
The museum of the East India Company formed, for a large part of the nineteenth century, one of the sights of London. In recent years, little has been remembered of it beyond its mere existence, while an assumed negative role has been widely attributed to it on the basis of its position at the heart of one of Britain’s arch-colonialist enterprises.
Extensively illustrated, The India Museum Revisited surveys the contents of its multi-faceted collections—with respect to materials, their manufacture, and original functions on the Indian sub-continent—as well as the collectors who gathered them and the manner in which they were mobilized to various ends within the museum.
From this integrated treatment of documentary and material sources, a more accurate, rounded, and nuanced picture emerges of an institution that contributed in major ways, over a period of eighty years, to the representation of India for a European audience, not only in Britain but through the museum’s involvement in the international exposition movement to audiences on the continent and beyond.
Table of Contents
List of figures Foreword Tristram Hunt Preface Acknowledgements The India Museum Revisited Part I Historical introduction 1 An ‘Oriental Museum’ at the India House 2 The objects themselves: restoring an identity to the collections Part II The collections of the India Museum 3 Historical relics: their role in the collection 4 Trading with and within India: material culture of commerce and control 5 Industry and technology: inorganic materials 6 Industry and technology: organic materials 7 The mirror of India: clothing, dress and ornament 8 Making war: weapons and defensive armour 9 Religious observation: introducing Indian devotional practice 10 Culture and recreation 11 Imaging India 12 Collections of individuals and the emergence of ethnography 13 The India Museum (partly) recollected Appendix: Glossary of indigenous terms as transcribed in the catalogue of 1880 Bibliography Index