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Title
The Magnificent Boat : The Colonial Theft of a South Seas Cultural Treasure / Götz Aly.
ISBN
9780674293199
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2023]
Copyright
©2023
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (176 p.)
Item Number
10.4159/9780674293199 doi
Dewey Decimal Classification
995.3
Summary
From an eminent and provocative historian, a wrenching parable of the ravages of colonialism in the South Pacific.Countless museums in the West have been criticized for their looted treasures, but few as trenchantly as the Humboldt Forum, which displays predominantly non-Western art and artifacts in a modern reconstruction of the former Royal Palace in Berlin. The Forum's premier attraction, an ornately decorated fifteen-meter boat from the island of Luf in modern-day Papua New Guinea, was acquired under the most dubious circumstances by Max Thiel, a German trader, in 1902 after two decades of bloody German colonial expeditions in Oceania.Götz Aly tells the story of the German pillaging of Luf and surrounding islands, a campaign of violence in which Berlin ethnologists were brazenly complicit. In the aftermath, the majestic vessel was sold to the Ethnological Museum in the imperial capital, where it has remained ever since. In Aly's vivid telling, the looted boat is a portal to a forgotten chapter in the history of empire-the conquest of the Bismarck Archipelago. One of these islands was even called Aly, in honor of the author's great-granduncle, Gottlob Johannes Aly, a naval chaplain who served aboard ships that helped subjugate the South Sea islands Germany colonized.While acknowledging the complexity of cultural ownership debates, Götz Aly boldly questions the legitimacy of allowing so many treasures from faraway, conquered places to remain located in the West. Through the story of one emblematic object, The Magnificent Boat artfully illuminates a sphere of colonial brutality of which too few are aware today.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Mai 2023)
Available in Other Form
print 9780674276574
Frontmatter
Contents
1 The Scene of the Crime: German New Guinea
2 With Pastor Aly's Blessings
3 The Luf Boat as Museum Attraction
4 The 1882 Luf Massacre
5 "Bastian's Network" of Thieves
6 Deceit, Larceny, and Looting
7 Curators, Crusaders, and Cannons
8 Ethnology, Child of Colonialism
9 The Luf Boat Comes to Berlin
10 An Artifact of an Ancient Culture
11 Islands Stripped Bare
12 Where Does the Luf Boat Belong?
Brief Biographies
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Sources and Acknowledgments
Illustration Credits
Index
