Colonial Museums: A European History

This essay examines the phenomenon of colonial museums in Europe during the 19th and early 20th centuries, highlighting their common strategies, origins, and characteristics across different nations. The author argues that colonial museums formed a consistent and homogeneous group, closely linked to national and international exhibitions, with a dual commercial and political vocation of promoting colonial products and power. The essay traces the origins of these museums to a rhizomatic network of institutions, geographical societies, and private interests that sponsored their creation. It analyzes the multidisciplinary and heterogeneous nature of their collections, which brought together commodities, artifacts, artworks, and war memorabilia in an effort to narrate the colonial experience. Particular attention is paid to the "national" colonial museums established in capital cities like London, Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Rome, which acted as centerpieces transmitting colonial imagery and ideology. The essay compares their architectural styles, display strategies involving dioramas and theatrical settings, and changing approaches over time towards more didactic storytelling. Ultimately, the author argues that colonial museums formed a unique hybrid genre that deliberately blurred boundaries between disciplines, scientific classification and commercial showrooms in service of promoting European imperial ambitions and the "civilizing" myth of colonialism across the continent. Their legacy reveals compromises made by artists, scientists and institutions in perpetuating colonial narratives.