The Raffles Museum, Singapore, 1823-1960
Performativities of British colonial rule
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5772156 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eiselt Chin Siew Ang (Raffles Institution, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Publication date | 2019-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | THESIS |
| Publisher | Nanyang Technological University (PUBLISHER • SG) |
| DOI | 10.32657/10220/48133 |
| OpenAlex | W2962139639 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 21 |
This dissertation is an interdisciplinary, humanist-centered examination of the cultural biography of the Raffles Museum, the predecessor of three present-day Singapore museums.Established in 1823 by the proconsul of British Southeast Asia, Thomas Stamford Raffles, the Raffles Museum was a major center for Western natural history and anthropological research, as well as the collecting of and within Southeast Asia from the latter 1800s until the early 1900s.Its site, building, collections, and biography thus document simultaneously, the West in Asia, British colonial politics and strategies in Southeast Asia, as well as Singapore's colonial experience.This thesis argues against an existing historical positioning of the museum as first, a benign repository; and second, as having been established by Raffles out of a colonial humanitarian dream and vision that was "inconsistent with the [imperial] realities of its time."It asserts that such INTRODUCTION: Imperial Realities DeniedTaking possession of the island in 1819 for the British Crown,[Raffles] formulated plans for its development ... this included the establishment of an institution that was designed to provide basic instruction, engage in higher scholarship, gather together information and data on the culture of the peoples and the natural environment and serve as a depository of that information...The original concept from which rose, ultimately, Raffles Institution, most certainly was a dream, an ideal, an experiment, perhaps.It was inconsistent with the realities of the times.-Eugene Wijeysingha.The Eagle Breeds a Gryphon On 1 April 1823, Thomas Stamford Raffles convened a meeting at Residency House
Institution · Possession (linguistics · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Socioeconomic Development in Asia · Travel Writing and Literature
Anthropology & the colonial encounter
Technology and Gender
Silencing the Past
Discipline and Punish
Rethinking Colonial Categories
Imagined communities
Bodies that matter
The birth of the museum
Of Whales and Dinosaurs
Singapore's Permanent Territorial Revolution
Contentious traditions
The East India Company, the Company's Museum, and the Political Economy of Natural History in the Early Nineteenth Century
Raffles and the Golden Opportunity 1781-1826
Plant Capitalism and Company Science
An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore
The Politics of Exhibiting Culture
Neocolonial Collaboration
Telling, Showing, Showing off
Introduction
Racial and ethnic manipulation in Colonial Malaya
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |