oa Een koloniaal natuurhistorisch netwerk

A colonial natural history network. The provenance of a long lost Haarlem elephant skull

The international research program Pressing Matter investigates the potential of so-called colonial objects to support reconciliation with the colonial past, and to deal with conflicting claims for these objects within museums. To be able to do so, our knowledge about the provenance of these objects needs to be improved. This article investigates the acquisition of an early-nineteenth century elephant skull in the Haarlem museum for natural history. Even though the skull itself is no longer available, its provenance shows how European zoologists and museums used transnational and local networks to acquire their objects, sometimes at the cost of local people on the frontier of the colonial world. Recontextualizing objects in natural history museums by researching provenance can be an important step in decolonizing these institutions, and helps to rewrite the history of collecting natural objects.