Serpents of Empire: Moral Encounters in Natural History c.1780-1870
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Authors
Advisors
Secord, James
Date
2019-02-23Awarding Institution
University of Cambridge
Author Affiliation
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
Qualification
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Language
English
Type
Thesis
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Hall, J. R. (2019). Serpents of Empire: Moral Encounters in Natural History c.1780-1870 (Doctoral thesis). https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.34947
Abstract
This dissertation examines encounters between humans and snakes from the 1780s to
the 1860s, principally focusing upon Britain and British India, to reassess the production
and circulation of natural historical knowledge. Serpents were at once familiar and
ambiguous in nineteenth-century Britain and its empire, present at every level of society
through Scripture, works of natural history, and imperial print culture. They appeared
across literary genres – in works of art, as dead specimens in museums, and living
attractions in shows and menageries – and their material and figurative presence in
London was dependent upon British imperial networks. Snakes loomed
disproportionately large in the imperial imaginary, where they were entangled in a
discourse of difference.
The practices of the natural history of snakes were harnessed to personal
ambition and colonial exigencies. By analyzing scientific books and papers, newspapers
and periodicals, taxidermy and cartoons, travel accounts, and government archives from
Britain and India, this study provides a connected account of how snakes were collected,
transported, described, experimented with, and used for a variety of ends. Following an
animal around, whether as material, textual, or visual representation, reveals a more
comprehensive picture of how people engaged with animals in the nineteenth century,
not confined by disciplinary or institutional boundaries at a time when these were being
constructed. The cultural and emotive power of snakes makes visible the heterogeneous
nature of those contributing to the production of natural historical knowledge. This
thesis shows how the moral character of snakes was implicated in how they were
encountered and understood by a range of actors, from museum naturalists to imperial
agents, and Indian snake-charmers to working-class visitors to the zoo.
The chapters examine different but overlapping modes of encounter with snakes:
collecting, preserving, and presenting them in museum settings; the imbrication of
anthropocentric concerns in attempts to classify and anatomize them; the mechanisms
and motivations behind attempts to produce authoritative ‘useful knowledge’
incorporating vivisectional experiments in the Madras Presidency in the late eighteenth
century; Orientalist representations of non-European interactions with snakes in nascent
print culture; and the emotional economy of educational displays of living snakes in
metropolitan Britain, especially with the emergence of new spaces for natural history,
notably the first reptile house at the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park. The approach
brings together insights from from history of science, animal history, and new imperial
histories to recover an affective dimension of natural history in imperial encounters.
Keywords
snakes, natural history, empire, knowledge, Britain, India, animals, print culture, history of science, collecting, serpent, museums
Sponsorship
Arts and Humanities Research Council doctoral studentship 2011-14.
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science predoctoral fellowship 2017.
Embargo Lift Date
2400-01-01
Identifiers
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.34947
Rights
All rights reserved, A small number of figures have been redacted where clearance has not been sought from copyright holders.