Historical Museum - Barfüsserkirche
Barfüsserplatz 7, 4051 Basel
By Sarah
Akanji and Claske Dijkema
Challenging
colonial modernity by looking at an exhibition in the Historical Museum of
Basel
The collection of the Basel Historical Museum called “Towards
an Understanding of the World” shows a collection of objects that were traded,
gained, collected, bought or sold between the 16th and the 18th century. In
relation to these objects the exhibition also sheds light on some prominent
people and families from Basel who contributed to the city’s wealth. The
collection is introduced with the following words:
We are naturally
inclined to broaden our horizons. This was no different in the Late Middle Ages
and Early Modern Age when people embarked on voyages of discovery, scanned the
skies to understand the earth’s place in the cosmos, sought inspiration in the art
and culture of the Ancients and started to explore the human body. What they
learned changed their perception of the world.
The narrative of curiosity, and bold exploration presented
here suffers from what the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls “The
Danger of a Single Story” (2009), with which she means that we always have to critically reflect on the perspective from which a
story is told. Narratives are neither fictions nor opposed to facts but they are made of both. It is the multiplication of
stories from different perspectives that makes up a richer, and more complex
understanding of Basel’s history, in which also those who have historically
been silenced can be made heard.
What has been called the “Age of discovery” or the “Age of
exploration”, could also be called the Age of colonization. In the narrative of
the historic museum there is no mention of this darker side of history and the
violence involved in it. The link between exploration and colonialism
is well demonstrated by Bernard Schär in Tropenliebe, a
book that places Basel within a global history and describes how the scientific
discoveries of the Sarasin cousins in the Tropics were only possible because of
the support they received from other colonial powers such as the Netherlands in
Indonesia (see site Faesch house).
We take Adichie’s warning for a single story as starting
point for looking at the collection at the Basel Historical Museum and we
critically engage with three objects on display. What larger story are these
objects part of? We seek to place the objects in a more global history that
Basel was already part of in the 16th century. The purpose of this
is to challenge a colonial modernity, which valorizes the history of successful
and rich Europeans, without acknowledging the dramatic consequences this
European engagement had for other parts of the world. This is an example of
eurocentrism: a way of looking at the world that places Western civilization at the
center at the expense of non-Western civilizations. We seek to break with this Eurocentric view by
looking for the other side of the story.
Figure 1 Globe Goblet. Photo P. Portner,
8.1.2017, Creative Commons
The first object we look at is the “Globe Goblet”, object
5001 in the online catalogue. It is a terrestrial globe of silver and
gold-plating that could also serve as a drinking vessel. It was made in the
middle of the 16th century in Zürich. On it we can see a
representation of the world as it was known by then, “the silver seas are full
of fish and mythical creatures” as the description states, Northern Africa is
known as “Barbaria” and the remoter regions are
labeled Risenland,
meaning “Land of the Giants”. One would expect that with initial travel these
monstrous races would disappear. But this did not happen straightforwardly and
a belief in the existence of monstrous races persisted. Othering continued in
important ways. Maps played an important role in appropriating and dominating
the world. Foreign territories were claimed by European names, while indigenous
names, knowledges and rights to land were discarded.
Figure 2 [Figure 2: Heliocentric Armillary Sphere,
Historic Museum Basel,
https://www.hmb.ch/museen/eguides/a/e/heliozentrische-armillarsphaere/, last
accessed 01.07.2022]
Just as the globe goblet a second object is presented to
showcase the progress of science in Europe throughout the 18th
century. It is a “heliocentric armillary sphere” (Object 5002 in catalogue),
which is described as an abstract of the planetary system and “represents the
movement of heavenly bodies with the aid of countercurrent rings”. The
scientific progress in map-making and in understanding the earth and other
planets helped to increase the distance that could be traveled by ship and to
access places that were inaccessible before. With the help of these
developments Europeans set out to explore and colonize new places, which over
time led to new ideas of cultural and racial hierarchies.
Figure 3 Automatic Clock held by a black person,
Historic Museum Basel,
https://www.hmb.ch/museen/eguides/a/e/automatenuhr-mohr-am-rebstock/, last
accessed 01.07.2022
The third object is an Automatic Clock held by a black
person (Object 5733 in catalogue). The purpose of
such «machines», according to the museum description, I quote, “lay not in
their practicality but in their capacity to fire the imagination. And what
could be more exotic than a «M***r»?!”. The description of the clock reproduces the exoticization
of Africans: It is an uncritical example of orientalism, which does not
question racist representations, and instead reproduces them in the present. The title of the object in itself
“M*** on a vine” is highly problematic as the M word is a racist and degrading
description for Black people,[1] that we
prefer not to reproduce.[2] Edward
Said wrote a poignant critique of orientalism.
Finally, looking at the overwhelming amount of silver and
gold used in these objects, it would have been interesting to learn more about
where these precious metals came from, in particular because the discovery,
production, and trading of precious metals was a major drive of the Spanish
colonization of the Americas during the late 15th and 16th centuries, a time
when there was an important demand for them in Europe and China (Borges et al, 2018, p.455).
Museums have a role to play in telling stories from
multiple perspectives and also include the voices of
those who have been historically silenced.
Sources
Borges, Rui et al (2018). European Silver Sources from the
15th to the 17th Century. The Influx of „New world“ Silver
in Portuguese Currency. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7978/2d8156beb06b9a9cf06084625e18432efc4b.pdf
Gregory, D. (2004). The Colonial Present. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Krüger, G. (2019). Afrikanische
Geschichte jenseits des Kolonialismus, in: Geschichte der Gegenwart.
Krüger, G. (2020). Über
Afrika schreiben – The Danger of a Single Story,
in: Geschichte der Gegenwart.
Mbembe, A. (2013). Critique de la raison nègre, Paris.
Mignolo, W.
(2011). The Darker Side of Western
Modernity. Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke University Press.
Ngozi
Adichie, C. (2009). The Danger of a
Single Story, TED Talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=de
[28.01.2022].
Spivak, G. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak?, in: Cary Nelson/Lawrence Grossberg (Hg.): Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture,
University of Illinois Press: Urbana, p. 271–313.
Said,
E. (1978). Orientalism, New York.
Object
5001: Globe Goblet, HMB.
https://www.hmb.ch/en/museums/eguides/a/e/globe-goblet/
Object
5002: Heliocentric Armillary Sphere, HMB. https://www.hmb.ch/en/museums/eguides/a/e/heliocentric-armillary-sphere/
Object
5733: “Automatenuhr: “M***” am Rebstock".
https://www.hmb.ch/en/museums/eguides/a/e/automatic-clock-moor-on-a-vine/
Object
5400: Andreas Ryff – A Conscientious Man of Commerce
(1550-1603), HMB.
https://www.hmb.ch/en/museums/eguides/a/e/andreas-ryff-a-conscientious-man-of-commerce/