Glossinidae
During the 19th century, “museums as ‘knowledge producing institutions' were the administrative core of the British empire, ...[creating] standards and practices which continue to this day (Richards, 1993 via Kaiser et. al, 2023, p. 15).The Imperial Bureau of Entomology (IBE), established in 1913, emerged as a way to coordinate information and specimens related to Britain’s “possessions” in tropical and subtropical Africa. It was thought that “authoritative identification” would enable the “control [of] noxious insects” (Hewitt, 1913, pp.659-660), making the colonies “habitable and profitable...for white men” (Marshall, 1910, p.3).
Flies in the Glossinidae family act as vectors for African trypanosomiasis, a pathogen which causes a disease called "N'gana" in cattle. It was spread through central Africa by British colonisers in the early 20th century (unintentionally through their infected cattle), and paradoxically made the land they conquered for arable exploitation impossible to cultivate. The presence of this fly has been used to make judgements about the 'development' of African agriculture and created a Western saviour complex, despite the fact that its rampant existence is the fault of colonial powers. The object which informed the viral model is the fly specimen from a museum collection.
Epistemic judgements drawn from the contents of museums may present themselves as empirical, but they are replete with connotations created for the natural world in the context of its usefulness to the British Empire. Re-evaluating the historic contexts of natural history collections can reveal their implicit value judgements.
References:
- Kaiser, K., Heumann, I., Nadim, T., Keysar. H., Petersen, M., Korun, M. & Berger, F. (2023). Promises of mass digitisation and the colonial realities of natural history collections. Journal of Natural Science Collections, Volume 11, 13 - 25.
- Hewitt, C. G. (1913). The Imperial Bureau of Entomology. Science, 37(957), 659–660. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/1637086
- Marshall, G. (1910). Commonwealth Institute of Entomology., Great Britain., & Imperial Institute of Entomology. Bulletin of entomological research. Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux. https:// www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/10305