Britain and the Heritage of Empire, c. 1800 – 1940

COMMON KNOWLEDGE Plunder for its own sake or for profit is one thing. Plunder for prestige is another. Twelve authors here investigate the mainly British record in uncovering, taking, and restoring antiquities in lands that came to form the British empire in its late nineteenth-century heyday. The resultant picture is not altogether bleak and is sometimes droll when the "rights" of others intrude--as when P. T. Barnum thought that America was entitled to carry off Shakespeare's house as a part of America's British heritage. The British record in India especially was good: much was taken home, but much more was carefully preserved on the spot, thanks to Lord Curzon, who saw to the restoration of the Taj Mahal and set it in a version of an English garden. Sometimes, as with the Benin bronzes, the rape proved to be a rescue. The building of Khartoum cathedral was an interesting exercise in imaginative re-creation of the past. The shifting story of the Aswan Dam has proved to be one of destruction as well as preservation. The Rosetta Stone is an example of plunder hijacked by one colonizer from another. Even the Crimean War proved to be an opportunity for excavation. Attitudes toward the "native" provoked mixed responses, eventually scholarly and benign--as in the cases of Australia and the Central American civilizations. Given that the profit motive has always been a major factor in all civilized societies, it is reassuring that far more good than harm has resulted from the British obsession with the past, both our own past and that of others, especially now that "heritage" is seen as a global and not just a national issue. That their heritage can sometimes still be ignored or destroyed is a sad reflection on some modern societies. --John Boardman doi 10.1215/0961754X-3465010 Published by Duke University Press