Shaping Natural History and Settler Society: Mary Elizabeth Barber and the Nineteenth-Century Cape

ISBN-13: 9783030226411 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 360 str.

Tanja Hammel

Spis treści

1 Introduction

Part I: African Experts and Science in the Cape

2 African Farmers and Medical Plant Experts

3 African Naturalists, Collectors, and Taxidermists

Part II: From Providing Data to Forging New Practices and Theories

4 Gender, Class and Competition

5 Proving and Circulating the Theory of Natural Selection

6 Barber’s Forging Scientific Practices and Theories

Part III: Negotiating Belonging through Science

7 Arguing with Artefacts, Biofacts and Organisms: Barber's Advocacy for 1820 Settlers’ Supremacy and Land Rights

8 Barber’s World of Birds as a Space of Gender Equality

9 Colonial Legacies in Post-Colonial Collections

10 ‘The fragments that are left behind’. 

O autorze

Tanja Hammel works in the History Department at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Her PhD dissertation, on which this monograph is based, received the annual faculty award for the humanities at the University of Basel in 2018.

Blurb

“Hammel successfully illuminates how the production and circulation of Barber’s work was deeply affected by contemporary attitudes towards gender and race within the colonial context of the nineteenth-century Cape. This fascinating book is destined to become a landmark in the history of science in South Africa.”

—Nigel Penn, University of Cape Town, South Africa

“This book is an original study of the contributions of a woman scientist. It is the most detailed study of its kind...The book will make a significant addition to the global literature that examines the colonial and gendered dimensions of the history of science.”

—William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK

“Moving seamlessly between biographical, local and international frames, this book provides a fresh look at the global knowledge transformations of the nineteenth century.”

—Kirsten McKenzie, University of Sydney, Australia

This book explores the life and work of Mary Elizabeth Barber, a British-born settler scientist who lived in the Cape during the nineteenth century. It provides a lens into a range of subjects within the history of knowledge and science, gender and social history, postcolonial, critical heritage and archival studies. The book examines the international importance of a marginalized scientist, the instrumentalisation of science to settlers' political concerns and reveals the pivotal but largely silenced contribution of indigenous African experts. Including a variety of material, visual and textual sources, this study explores how these artefacts are archived in museums and critically analyses their content and silences. The book traces Barber’s legacy across three continents, offering insights into the politics of memory and history-making.