Short Abstract

The panel explores the intersections of science and imperialism through neglected natural archives—biocollections of botanical, entomological, ornithological, conchological and palaeontological specimens—and their institutional, scientific and political afterlives in (post)colonial East Asia.

Long Abstract

Initiatives to digitise natural history collections—plants, taxidermied animals, conchological specimens, fossils, minerals housed in museums and other repositories—have become increasingly important in recent years. Examples include the Integrated Digitized Biocollections in the US, the Chinese Digital Herbarium and the Database of Specimens and Minerals of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. These natural archives, consisting of an estimated 2 billion specimens worldwide, are essential to studying the history of life on our planet. By making collections globally available and searchable, digitization initiatives seek to address a range of issues around their preservation, accessibility, study and stewardship. The impacts of digitization extend from biodiversity conservation and medicine discovery to agricultural research and decolonisation in museums.

Our panel starts from the premise that natural archives are also important to historians of science. Indeed, understanding the historical development of biocollections is essential to evaluating their past and present significance to science and historicizing current digitization initiatives. The four papers explore archives whose creation and study were mediated by Japanese and British imperialism in East and Southeast Asia: fossil elephants from Japan, China and British India studied by palaeontologist Matsumoto Hikoshichirō at the Tohoku Imperial University in the first decades of the twentieth century; birds, insects and marine shells collected by Yamamura Yaeko in the Philippines in the 1920s-1930s, subsequently donated to institutions in Tokyo and imperial biological facilities; dried plant specimens collected by Japanese teacher-cum-naturalists in South Jeolla Province in the 1930s; ornithological specimens from colonial Korea, currently held at the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, Japan, and the National Science Museum, South Korea. Conceptualizing natural archives as objects of historical inquiry sheds new light on the relationship between Japanese settler colonialism and knowledge making practices about the natural world, the role of local actors and women in the collection and study of natural specimens, the professionalization of science in colonized territories, the trans-regional networks that facilitated the circulation of knowledge and specimens, the incorporation of biocollections and the deep past into projects of institution-, empire- and nation-building, and attempts to depoliticize biocollections in the postcolonial period.