Voyage to the Islands: This exhibition uses the collections of the John Carter Brown Library to explore the relationship between early modern scientific knowledge, the Atlantic slave trade and the African diaspora in the Caribbean islands. While historians have long stressed the importance of travel in the making of early modern natural history, the relation between the natural sciences and European interactions with Africans through the slave trade has only recently received attention. Examining the intersection of science and slavery allows us to see how Africans in diaspora both contributed to European sciences and maintained their own knowledge traditions in opposition to them. Exhibition may be seen in Reading Room from may 3 through Exhibition prepared by guest curator, James Delbourgo, with assistance from Susan Danforth. |
Images: Portrait of Hans Sloane, London, ca. 1750, and "Shipping sugar," Ladies' society for promoting the early education of negro children, London [ca. 1833].