ThesisWroteMe

It all starts out in the grand age of trade under colonial rule by European maritime and trade powers. Along the southwestern coastal belt of Ceylon, Portuguese-Indian folk settled for centuries there, grasping at the opportunities of international trade in the early 1900s. This is how by virtue of being the sixth child, I happen to own ten perches of land, give or take a perch here or there, in the back garden of my home. It is not an ancestral home as we did not descend from generations living in that location. It was shamelessly acquired by the spoils of the British Empire. A tale of many colonial millionaires, my grandfather, a carpentry person, acquired and diversified, losing sight of wood for trees and getting fingers in many investment pies.  An unworldly middle-class gent of a simpler countenance - if my father's recollection of his father is to be accepted - on account of being the largest shareholder was appointed as the unlikely Chairman of Bonaz, a Dutch shipping com...

  So what of the collections, the repositories, boxes and catalogues of archival data languishing in British and other former imperial locations? Should not these historical collections be made note of, sifted through and employed in enriching the knowledge and learning of scholars, students and other groups in the former colonised territories?  If historical artefacts are moving back to the territories from whence they were rudely plucked and in some instances, plundered by imperial powers, what should be the rightful and equitable deployment of the collections? While these depositions were in all probability initiated and collated in more formal and dignified practices through structures of colonial rule, yet admittedly informed by the power and access granted to agents of imperial rule operating from positions including that of curator, museum assistant, writer, expert and civil servant.  Sir Norman Boyd Kinnear ordered a survey of Ceylon's mammals as the Curator (circ...