Leiden University Scholarly Publications

Willink, R.J. 2006

De bewogen verzamelgeschiedenis van de West-Centraal-Afrikaanse collecties in Nederland (1856-1889)

Doctoral Thesis

open access

The 1850s, the discovery of new regions of Africa gradually brought the western world knowledge of the African peoples inhabiting them, and of their cultures. Increasing attention was given to... Show moreThe 1850s, the discovery of new regions of Africa gradually brought the western world knowledge of the African peoples inhabiting them, and of their cultures. Increasing attention was given to objects used by these Africans in their everyday life, and the relatively short period from 1855 to c. 1880 saw a remarkable development in this respect. Soon, it was impossible to imagine travel books without their illustrations showing articles of use from the newly opened West Central African region, and ethnographical museums had begun collecting these objects. Dutch museums also participated in these acquisitions. This research describes the growth of ethnographic interest as shown in international accounts of travel in foreign parts. The fascination with indigenous objects as described in travel accounts - especially where cult statues were concerned - constitutes a gauge of the extent to which people were becoming interested in the ‘morals and customs’ of African peoples. Then follows a description of the Dutch museums’ policy on the acquisition and documentation of objects, which was partly based on the travel accounts mentioned above.We shall recount how, during the last days of the slave trade, many thousands of objects flowed into Dutch museums from the extensive coastal region of West Central Africa. After the Colonial Museum in Haarlem and the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities (Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden) in The Hague had led the way in 1876 and 1877 respectively, halls and depots in the ethnological museums in Leiden, Rotterdam (the Diergaarde) and Amsterdam (‘Artis’) were gradually filled with these African ethnographic items, the collection and description of which had begun to be carried out in a scholarly manner. At that time virtually all the international accounts written about travels in Africa were in the possession of the Dutch ethnological museums. The attention of museum curators was thus drawn to these ethnographic items, and on several occasions curators utilised the descriptions and illustrations published in the travel accounts as guide books for their own procedures. The collections included objects that illustrate daily life: household articles, hand weapons, throwing weapons, chiefs’ headdresses, masks for members of secret societies, (gun)powder holders, ornaments, bags, footwear, decorated ivory derived from elephant and hippopotamus teeth, and especially various cult statues. The Afrikaansche Handels Vereeniging (AHV, the African Trading Association), later to become the Nieuwe Afrikaansche Handels Vennootschap (NAHV, the New African Trading Society) after 1880, played a key role in the transportation of these objects. With the assistance of good will from the boards of directors for the AHV and NAHV, the museums were successful in winning company agents to their collecting cause, and these agents tried their best in far-away Africa to gain a name as donators of objects to the Dutch museums. While a good deal of distaste for, and criticism of the ‘morals and customs’ of ‘the negro’ was still to be read in the scholarly literature (which at that time included travel accounts), the passion for collecting took possession of the ethnographic museums. The correspondence we encounter in museum archives provides a picture of the competition between institutes, occasionally engaging in skirmishes on the subject of collecting objects deriving from this African heritage. These disputes concerned African objects that appeared to run counter to the westerners’ view that ‘the negro’ civilization was inferior to their own. However, there was no conflict between this underestimation and the passion for collecting. The last section of this investigation concentrates on the views of that period on the way in which these West Central ethnographic objects could be fitted into a survey of more or less evolved ‘races, species and peoples’. The main question here concerns the extent to which indigenous objects, and especially cult statues (minkisi) collected in the West Central coastal area, were supposed to support the western belief that Africans were less civilized in comparison with other ‘races’. With the aid of sources deriving from the history of these Dutch collections, we will show the way in which these objects were used in order to demonstrate the ‘African’s’ superstition and lack of artistic sensibility, and thus his lower level of civilization. The ethnographic museums in Leiden, Rotterdam and Amsterdam exhibited their African collections together with the clear message that African material culture represented an inferior civilization. Nonetheless there was also space for a certain value placed on some objects, where these were regarded as rare and exotic. Just as in previous centuries, objects made of basketwork or decorated ivory were prized as beautifully made and beautifully shaped curiosities. Other research was needed to support and underpin this view of ‘inferiority’. For example, the State Ethnographic Museum in Leiden (which later became the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde) collected ‘negro skulls’ as well as articles of use, in the interest of craniology with its measurements of skulls, a wide-spread branch of physical anthropology in that period. The results of these investigations were intended to link the physical characteristics of ‘the negro’ with the ethnographic collections, in order to show what ‘the negro’ represented in the cultural sense as well. Show less