Captivity's Collections
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€91.99
A01=Kathleen S. Murphy
Atlantic History
Atlantic slavery
Author_Kathleen S. Murphy
British colonialism and science
Category=JBS
Category=NHD
Category=NHTS
Category=WN
collectors and collecting
Colonial British America and the Caribbean
early modern Atlantic World
Eighteenth-century British slave trade
enslaved collectors
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
history of collecting
history of museums
history of natural history and biological sciences
history of science and medicine
imperialism and colonialism
legacies of slavery and the slave trade
maritime history
museum studies
natural historical collecting
natural history
natural history museums
natural knowledge production
science and commerce
science and empire
scientific profits of the slave trade
slave ship surgeons
slave ships
slavery studies
transatlantic slave trade
West and West Central Africa
Product details
- ISBN 9781469675909
- Weight: 272g
- Dimensions: 155 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 17 Oct 2023
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Cashews from Africa's Gold Coast, butterflies from Sierra Leone, jalap root from Veracruz, shells from Jamaica—in the eighteenth century, these specimens from faraway corners of the Atlantic were tucked away onboard inhumane British slaving vessels. Kathleen S. Murphy argues that the era's explosion of new natural knowledge was deeply connected to the circulation of individuals, objects, and ideas through the networks of the British transatlantic slave trade. Plants, seeds, preserved animals and insects, and other specimens were gathered by British slave ship surgeons, mariners, and traders at slaving factories in West Africa, in ports where captive Africans disembarked, and near the British South Sea Company's trading factories in Spanish America. The specimens were displayed in British museums and herbaria, depicted in published natural histories, and discussed in the halls of scientific societies.
Grounded in extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, Captivity's Collections mines scientific treatises, slaving companies' records, naturalists' correspondence, and museum catalogs to recover in rich detail the scope of the slave trade's collecting operations. The book reveals the scientific and natural historical profit derived from these activities and the crucial role of specimens gathered along the routes of the slave trade on emerging ideas in natural history.
Grounded in extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, Captivity's Collections mines scientific treatises, slaving companies' records, naturalists' correspondence, and museum catalogs to recover in rich detail the scope of the slave trade's collecting operations. The book reveals the scientific and natural historical profit derived from these activities and the crucial role of specimens gathered along the routes of the slave trade on emerging ideas in natural history.
Kathleen S. Murphy is professor of history at California Polytechnic State University.
