Silent Witness: Tracing Narratives of Empire through Objects and Archives in the West African Collections at the Manchester Museum

Abstract

There is an immediate connection between British histories of trade, empire and colonialism and the West African collections at the Manchester Museum. All objects have the potential to impart information about moments in their lives and a close reading of these collections show how objects actively shaped local and global networks of understanding within and between the locales of West Africa and Manchester.Through a series of collection-based case studies linking objects and archives, this article provides evidence of how narratives relating to complex histories of empire are not confined to one type of object or to collections donated at a particular time. Each object history is unique; put together these histories encapsulate a complex range of interactions. A ‘culture of amnesia’ has meant that the underlying politics concerning the contacts and exchanges necessary to enable the physical movement of an object from one cultural context to another has, until recently, been left unexamined. This article aims to show that, via a detailed consideration of objects in the collections at the Manchester Museum and the evidence associated with them, it is possible to explore this phenomenon.In doing so this article will add to the body of research aimed at revealing the potential and importance of using museum collections to recover neglected histories.