Picturing the Antipodes: race, image and empire in 19C. Britain

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This project is inspired by the British Museum's significant early pictorial collections of Australian Indigenous people. The research will focus on images produced c.1800-1860 - after the earliest British exploration and settlement of Australia, but before the granting of settler self-government - when ideas of race, civilization, humanity and colonization were in flux in Australia and across Britain's Empire. The project will move beyond traditional art history approaches to colonial Australia's visual heritage, to consider questions of production, circulation, collection, reproduction and display within colonial, imperial and Indigenous histories. As such it will encourage a consideration of how racialised and hierarchical ideas about Australia's Aboriginal peoples shaped British notions of empire, governance and civilization that continue to resonate for Indigenous people today. While the research will be based primarily on the study of pictorial images of Australian Indigenous peoples in the British Museum, other collections such as the Natural History Museum and British Library, hold relevant material that may be investigated. Consequently, the project should not only complicate our understanding of London's role as an imperial capital, but also create links between scattered collections of objects, images and documents in the U.K.