Slavery, empire, and the cabinet of curiosities: Hans Sloane and the origins of the British Museum
- Date
2018-02-28
- Main contributor
University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Summary
-
In 1759, London’s British Museum opened its doors for the first time, the first free national public museum in the world. In this Phi Beta Kappa Lecture at Medical Center Hour, historian James Delbourgo explores the role of slavery and imperialism in making this now venerable institution possible by exploring the career of its founder, Anglo-Irish physician Sir Hans Sloane. Sloane worked in Jamaica as a plantation doctor, used money from sugar plantations in the caribbean and from the Atlantic slave trade to support his collecting, and created his own personal imperial network to assemble one of the greatest cabinets of curiosities in the world—and one of the key institutional legacies of the Enlightenment. Co-presented with Phi Beta Kappa (Beta of Virginia), President's Commission on Slavery and the University, Department of History, and History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, Historical Collections, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
- Contributors
Delbourgo, James, 1972- (Speaker); Childress, Marcia Day (Moderator); University of Virginia. School of Medicine
- Publisher
Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
- Genre
Filmed lectures
- Subjects
Sloane, Hans, Sir, 1660-1753; Natural history museums; Museums--Moral and ethical aspects; British Museum
- Collection
Medical Center Hour
- Unit
Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
- Language
English
- Terms of Use
IN COPYRIGHT - EDUCATIONAL USE PERMITTED This Rights Statement can be used only for copyrighted Items for which the organization making the Item available is the rights-holder or has been explicitly authorized by the rights-holder(s) to allow third parties to use the Work for educational purposes without first obtaining permission. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
- Physical Description
1 online resource (1 video file, 58:55 min.) : sound, color
Access Restrictions
This item is accessible by: the public.