Bombay Africans 1850-1910, Royal Geographical Society, 25 September - 29 November 2007

This was the second in a series of exhibitions at the Royal Geographical Society to come out of their project, ‘Crossing Continents: Connecting Communities’ (funded by the Heritage Lottery). Aiming to uncover marginalized or ‘hidden’ histories embedded in the Society's vast and unparalleled collections, these exhibitions acknowledge the non-European contribution to the history of the Society and its role in the history of exploration. The ‘Bombay Africans’ project draws attention to the men (and where feasible women) who accompanied, assisted and worked alongside British and other European explorers as guides, porters, interpreters, gun-bearers and so on. In so doing it demonstrates that explorers though typically cast as solitary heroes were heavily dependent on ‘local’ knowledge and support. Created in partnership with historian Cliff Pereira (Royal Geographical Society-IBG), the interpretations of historical materials, narratives and themes for this exhibition were developed through a series of workshops with the Tanzanian Women's Association (London), Friends of Maasai People (Harrow), Congolese Community in the UK, Lancaster Youth Group (Ladbroke Grove, London), Ghanaian Elders Group (Black Cultural Archives, London) and O-Bay Community Trust (Edmonton, London). Incorporating some of the community responses from these sessions into the exhibition itself, ‘Bombay Afrians’ also attempts to convey something of the relevance of such ‘hidden’ histories today. With workshops and lectures accompanying each exhibition, the Crossing Continents project helps to bring Black and Asian histories into the public domain and to highlight the diverse historical geographies of Britain and their relevance today. For the ‘Bombay Africans’ exhibition these histories are located in the Indian Ocean, with a story of multiple threads, woven into broader histories of the slave trade and of the exploration of Africa.

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Exhibition · Frontier · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Relevance (law) · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law

• Afterword

  Open Access•Tapsi Mathur•Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschicht…•2021

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