Narrating Missionary Collections: The Egba-Yoruba Mission of Henry Townsend and its Material Culture, 1840-1880

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The proposed research takes Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM)'s collection of Egba-Yoruba objects from Abeokuta (in present-day Nigeria) as a focus for rethinking how Western museums articulate historical knowledge about African societies and the ways this differs from how African societies perceive themselves. The objects were assembled by Henry Townsend (1815-1886) during his time in West Africa as a missionary for the Church Missionary Society (CMS). Through ethnographic fieldwork in Abeokuta, archival research at the Cadbury Research Library (University of Birmingham) and at the National Archives of Nigeria (University of Ibadan), object analysis at RAMM, and active engagement with Yoruba communities in the UK, this research will explore the different ways the past is articulated in the present. The outcome will make it possible to reflect on how the objects have been conceptualised in a museum setting, and to explore alternative approaches to display.