The Duchess's Shells: National History Collections and Voyages of Discovery in the Age of Enlightenment Science

这个项目探索了18世纪末英国的贝壳收集，作为一种复杂的社会实践和启蒙科学活动的一种形式。17世纪70年代，詹姆斯·库克船长从南太平洋带着贝壳回到英国，在启蒙时期收集贝壳的热情和受欢迎程度达到顶峰。这些新的、奇异的和稀有的贝壳是非常令人向往的物品，因为收藏家和博物学家试图将来自太平洋的标本添加到他们现有的欧洲、加勒比和南亚贝壳收藏中。收集这些贝壳的方法是多样和复杂的，涉及敬礼赠送、赞助人/客户等级制度、商业交易、朋友之间的贷款、壮观的拍卖、令人尴尬的诈骗和重罪。这个项目通过关注波特兰公爵夫人玛格丽特·卡文迪什·本廷克和她的贝壳收藏，研究了自然历史收藏与发现之旅的交集，这是英国最大、最好的贝壳收藏，如果不是整个欧洲的话。本研究重建了这个时代的贝壳收藏文化，重点研究了公爵夫人参与的科学网络，她收集收藏品的方法，以及她用来分类和展示她的收藏品的技术。在追踪公爵夫人活动的过程中，这项研究还将阐明英格兰省级业余博物学家以及伦敦科学界精英的收集做法，并将揭示鉴赏力和专业知识之间的紧张关系，社会性和科学性之间的联系，以及性别和阶级在科学知识生产中的作用。这项研究基于对自然学家信件、国家信件、船舶日志、博物馆指南和销售目录等形式的档案材料的检查和分析，这些材料主要位于英国，即大英博物馆、大英图书馆、格拉斯哥的亨特里亚博物馆、林尼安协会、诺丁汉大学、皇家学会、皇家外科学院和格林威治的国家海事博物馆。智力上的功绩。太多时候，收集自然历史被认为是一种特权和鉴赏力的练习。特别是，贝壳收集，可能是因为它强调物体的美学表现，在很大程度上被忽视了，因为它是科学实践。这项研究将表明，自然历史标本的收集者最终是在探索自然界中秩序和多样性之间的紧张关系，因为他们努力按照林奈分类法对他们的藏品进行分类和编目。这些活动是启蒙计划的核心，目的是使制度和秩序与自然相适应。最重要的是，这个项目致力于通过详细记录公爵夫人作为自然历史标本的收集者和分类者的活动，并通过检查她与英国各种科学界的关系，恢复妇女在生产自然知识方面的代理作用。这项研究的成果将在博物馆关于妇女和自然历史的展览、公开展示和学术会议以及关于妇女和科学的大学课程以及关于收藏和物质文化的研讨会上传播。研究结果将以论文形式发表在相关学术期刊上，也将作为一本面向对自然历史、收藏和库克航海感兴趣的普通读者，以及科学史、妇女研究、太平洋探险史、博物馆研究和物质文化研究方面的专家的书籍。

This project explores shell collecting in late eighteenth-century Britain as a complex social practice and as a form of Enlightenment scientific activity. Shell collecting in the Enlightenment reached its peak in terms of enthusiasm and popularity when Captain James Cook returned to England in the 1770s with shells from the South Pacific. These new, exotic, and rare shells were much desired objects as collectors and naturalists sought to add specimens from the Pacific to their already existing collections of European, Caribbean, and South Asian shells. The methods by which these shells were collected were multiple and complex, involving honorific gift-giving, patron/client hierarchies, commercial exchanges, loans among friends, spectacular auctions, embarrassing swindles, and felony. This project examines the intersection of natural history collecting with the voyages of discovery by focusing on Margaret Cavendish Bentinck, the Duchess of Portland, and her shell collection, which was the largest and finest in England, if not all of Europe. This study reconstructs the culture of shell collecting in this era, focusing on the scientific networks in which the Duchess participated, the methods by which she amassed her collections, and the techniques that she used to classify and display her collection. In the process of tracing the Duchess's activities, this study will also illuminate the collecting practices of England's provincial amateur naturalists as well as London's scientific elite and will reveal the tensions between connoisseurship and professional expertise, the linkage between sociability and science, and the role of gender and class in the production of scientific knowledge. This study is based upon the examination and analysis of archival materials in the form of naturalists' letters, state correspondence, ships' logs, museum guides, and sales catalogs, which are located mostly in Britain, namely, in the British Museum, the British Library, the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, the Linnean Society, University of Nottingham, the Royal Society, the Royal College of Surgeons, and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Intellectual Merit. Too often natural history collecting has been dismissed as an exercise in privilege and connoisseurship. In particular, shell collecting, perhaps because of its emphasis on aesthetic presentation of objects, has been largely overlooked as scientific praxis. This study will suggest that collectors of natural history specimens were ultimately exploring the tension between order and variety in nature as they struggled to classify and catalog their collections according to Linnaean taxonomy. These activities were at the heart of the Enlightenment project of bringing system and order to bear on nature. Most importantly, this project works to restore women as agents in the production of knowledge about nature by documenting in detail the duchess's activities as a collector and classifier of natural history specimens and by examining her relationships with various scientific communities in Britain.Broader Impacts. The results of this research will be disseminated in museum displays on women and natural history, in public presentations as well as at academic conferences, and in university courses on women and science and seminars on collecting and material culture. Results will be published as articles in refereed scholarly journals, and as a book addressed to both general audiences interested in natural history, collecting, and Cook's voyages as well as specialists in history of science, women's studies, history of Pacific exploration, museum studies, and material culture studies.