Publication date: 5 October 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800085701
Number of illustrations: 180
The India Museum Revisited
Arthur MacGregor (Author), Tristram Hunt (Foreword)
Series: V&A co-publications
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 provides a full examination of the museum’s founding manifesto and evolving ambitions. It 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 80 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.
Related titles
Ethnographic Experiments with Artists, Designers and Boundary Objects
Francisco Martínez,
01 November 2021
The India Museum Revisited
Series: V&A co-publications
Publication date: October 5, 2023
Open Access PDF ISBN: 9781800085701
Paperback ISBN: 9781800085718
Hardback ISBN: 9781800085725
Trim size (hardback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm
Trim size (paperback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm
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 provides a full examination of the museum’s founding manifesto and evolving ambitions. It 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 80 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 book and its companion website will become standard sources for studying European and American practices of visually ‘documenting’ distant lands, the inescapable entwining of collections and displays with nineteenth-century imperial ambition and its rationalizing hierarchies of race and culture, while also affording opportunities to reassess the collection in ways that transcend the colonial constructs that shaped it.’
Journal of the History of Collections
‘The book and its companion website will become standard sources for studying European and American practices of visually ‘documenting’ distant lands, the inescapable entwining of collections and displays with nineteenth-century imperial ambition and its rationalizing hierarchies of race and culture, while also affording opportunities to reassess the collection in ways that transcend the colonial constructs that shaped it.’
Journal of the History of Collections
‘As both scholarly and popular interest in the East India Company continues to develop, The India Museum Revisited *will serve as both the basis and a significant inspiration for future research.’
*The Antiquaries Journal
‘This book [of] 10 richly illustrated chapters… would be useful for researchers and students of Indian art and museums, and those working with material culture as they seek to understand the objects collected and used by the East India Company, which influenced British audiences’ understanding of Indian culture in the last century of the company’s rule.’
Journal of Anthropological Research
