The exhibition Hew Locke what have we here? at the British Museum (17 October 2024 to 9 February 2025) is remarkable. Hew Locke’s creative and reflective provocations – artwork and text – makes you look at the objects in a way I have not seen before at that Museum. And the objects! From things well known – a replica of the Koh-I-Noor diamond – to beautiful sculptures I’ve never seen or knew were in the museum – the spirit figures by indigenous Taino people in Jamaica are just an example. All this intercut with provocations and nuanced reflections. The Enlightenment Gallery on the ground floor also has some of Hew Locke's figures The Watchers and I am reminded here of my friend Subhadra Das' book Uncivilised. Ten Lies that Made the West. The figures offer a commentary and a counterbalance to the knowledge / power dynamic that the Enlightenment embodies in these objects.
People much more expert than me in colonial history, whether academic or lived experience, will have far more interesting things to say and I hope to hear some of their reflections. And that’s one of the points of the exhibition, as Hew Locke writes at the entrance:
These bells seem to be sounding an alarm from the past. Is there a problem at the Museum? Well, obviously there is a problem. Hence this discussion is taking place. It’s a call for dialogue, serious dialogue.
The Abyssinian ‘expedition’ of 1867-68 was one of the murderous campaigns of looting and retribution that is featured here. It was eye opening to see some of the beautiful golden jewellery taken from Ethiopia on display in the ‘Treasure’ section but what this exhibition does so well his draw attention to the people behind the objects. The people affected by economic and military conquest, whether the dispossessed children of royalty from African and Indian Kingdoms or those enslaved and brutally murdered when fighting back, or those whose lands are suddenly taken.
Prince Alemayahu features heavily in both the section on these ‘lost’ children and in the Abyssinian section (for more read Andrew Heavens’ The Prince and the Plunder). It was somewhat chilling and yet bizarre to see the actual objects from Ethiopia worn by adventurer Captain Speedy in his ‘dress up’ as an Ethiopian to pose with the young orphaned boy (see below). Bizarre as it brings home the sense of ‘game’ for the British men that these expeditions held. Opposite the Ethiopian shield was a Maxim machine gun. A reminder of the slaughter of people from Ethiopia and elsewhere during these battles. Again, though, the exhibition reminds us of the numerous people involved behind the scenes in this plunder as the objects come from the man sent by the museum to collect items, Richard Rivington Holmes, as well as General Napier – leader of the expedition – and numerous individual soldiers.
My colleague Lucia Patrizio Gunning and I wrote about Abyssinian or Maqdala 1868, mainly in connection with a letter from archaeologist and Keeper of the Greek and Roman Antiquities Department Sir Charles Thomas Newton to the head of the Royal Geographical Society Sir Roderick Murchison. Newton wanted to send a ‘man from the museum’ to excavate and / or collect antiquities and our point was there was a planned plunder that did not go to plan as few antiquities were collected, though many other valuable items were. (I use valuable in both a spiritual and material sense here as these items are valuable to the Ethiopian Christian Church and sense of nationhood).
Although, I’m working on other areas now – namely the artist and wife of Newton, (Ann) Mary Severn Newton – when I was in the Museum archives recently looking for traces of Mary, a letter to Newton jumped out at me. This was from Clements Markham, then at the India Office and later himself
President of the Royal Geographical Society, offering to act for the British Museum. Markham even by 19thC colonial standards has a controversial legacy. In our article we referred to his book A History of the Abyssinian Expedition (1869), written with William Francis Prideaux, who was one of the British hostages imprisoned for 2 years at Maqdala. I share it here as a reminder that for every object on display in what have we here? there were numerous men (and they were mainly men) from learned societies and the civil service as well as the military who were involved but often ad hoc and chaotically. The books written on these ‘campaigns’ by them and media articles from the time generate powerful historical narratives that we must unpick too.
21 Eccleston Square*
October 9 1867
My dear sir,
Sir Roderick Murchison tells me that you intend to move about getting an archaeologist attached to the Abyssinian Expedition. I find that they are beginning to get nervous about overloading the boat, and fear that they may refuse. If so, I shall be very happy to do my best to follow up any instructions you may take to give me so far as opportunities of antiquarian research may offer. But I fancy, Adulis and Asan are the only two points where Ptolemaic remains are at all likely to be met with. Berenice probably has a larger field, but it is scarcely within reach – unless [word?]* on the way home.
I go out as geographer to take note of all matters relating to physical geography to map &c &c. Sir Stafford Northcote thought it desirable that I should do so and will make the necessary arrangements for my joining the expedition.
Yours very truly,
Clements Markham
*Letter Book – Original Letters 1861-68 L to Z Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, No. 485.
Hew Locke, Isabel Seligmann and Indra Khanna (2024), Hew Locke. what have we here? London: British Museum Press.
L. Patrizio Gunning and D. Challis (2023), ‘Planned Plunder, the British Museum, and the 1868 Maqdala Expedition’, The Historical Journal, 66(3), pp. 550–572. doi:10.1017/S0018246X2200036X.
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