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

by Tanja Hammel

Overview

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 the life and works 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 and displayed in museums and critically analyses their content and silences. The book traces Barber’s legacy across three continents in collections and archives, offering insights into the politics of memory and history-making. At the same time, it forges a nuanced argument, incorporating study of the North and South, the history of science and social history, and the past and the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030226381
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	08/14/2019
Series:	Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
Edition description:	1st ed. 2019
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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’.