Coins and colonialism between South Asia and Britain: tracing numismatic networks of collecting from field to museum

This thesis presents a history of coin collecting in colonial India by British and Indian collectors and scholars in the late nineteenth to the early to mid-twentieth centuries. Taking an object biography approach, I recount the journey of coins from the ground up to their acquisition to UK museums, as they pass through the hands of agricultural workers, labourers, scavenging communities, collectors, dealers, scholars and museum professionals. During their postings in South Asia, British colonial officials developed an interest in the so-called missing history of the subcontinent and formed coin collections to write this history, which they deposited in UK museums after their return. Although these collections are named after British collectors, the role of Indian actors in their formation has so far been neglected. This thesis highlights the crucial role of Indians from diverse social backgrounds in forming these collections and advancing numismatic studies. It reveals how British collectors relied on Indian actors for both coin supplies and accompanying information, despite viewing them through racialised lenses. By focusing on Indians from middling and lower caste and class backgrounds, I offer a bottom-up history of collecting that differs from traditional histories of collecting that often focus on elite collectors. Although there is a growing trend of investigating histories of colonial collecting and of collections housed within UK heritage institutions, numismatic collections have received little attention in this scholarship so far. Giving into prejudiced notions about a perceived lack of written sources to study Indian history, European scholars turned to material sources like coins to fill gaps in India’s history. I examine how these networks of European collector-scholars used coins to produce knowledge on Indian history and numismatics that narrativized the story of the Indo-Greeks and Alexander the Great as a celebratory story. On the other hand, amid growing nationalist fervour in India, Indian historians used these coins to offer disruptive interpretations of Indian history that instead portrayed the Gupta and Mauryan empires as the golden age of India. I argue that the structures of Empire, legal, administrative and museological were key to the coin collecting endeavours of British officials. The networks formed through these structures facilitated the production of knowledge on Indian history and numismatics and were responsible for the transfer of large collections of South Asian coins to UK museums. As heritage legislation was introduced to control the official movement of Indian antiquities from India to abroad, these private collectors became the means through which UK museums expanded their South Asian coin collections bypassing legislation intended to protect the loss of heritage in colonised countries. By revealing the multi-racial and intercontinental social and professional networks involved in the assemblage, transfer, and acquisition of these collections, I bring to life a part of the complex, hierarchical and ethically sensitive history of museum collections in the UK. I reveal the stories of the countless hands that are behind the coins we see in glass cabinets today, helping provide a fuller and more complex story of the movement of objects from colonial South Asia to UK museums. Lastly, I show how practices inside the museum such as cataloguing, digitising, displaying and storing coins further diminish the contribution of these South Asian actors in assembling coin collections, so we only remember the European male collector responsible for transferring the collections.<p></p>

Author dc:creator

• Shreya Gupta (21041696)

• colonialism
• coins
• numismatics
• history of collecting
• museums and heritage studies
• History of knowledge production

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved
• Open Access after 2028-02-03

Identifier

10779/exe.31241578.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/31241578