Navigating the Customs House, Then and Now: A Synthesis of British Colonial Collecting in Australia, 1788–1823

Abstract

Amid growing public and academic interest in the identification and return of Aboriginal objects acquired by Britain from Australia after 1788, enquiries into the disputed origins of the British Museum’s ‘Gweagal shield’ have highlighted the need for new and better forms of provenance research. This article explores a novel methodology and source of information: British Treasury and customs records detailing the descriptions, values, and duties paid upon a vast number of colonial collections of Aboriginal objects, human remains, and natural history specimens known to have disembarked in Britain between 1788 and 1823. By positing a new provenance for the ‘Gweagal shield’ – namely, that it may have accompanied Bennelong, Yemmerrawanne and Arthur Phillip on their passage to England in 1793 – the article explores the potential of such records for highlighting what, when, how, and from whom Australian collections arrived in Britain in this early and hitherto little-understood period.

Acknowledgement

I thank Dr Maria Nugent for her comments on early drafts; likewise, Professor Gaye Sculthorpe and Dr Paul Irish. I am also grateful to the staff of The National Archives, London for their assistance in procuring a large number of records.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Object Oc1978, Q.839, The British Museum.

2 Nicholas Thomas, ‘A Case of Identity: The Artefacts of the 1770 Kamay (Botany Bay) Encounter’, Australian Historical Studies 49, no. 1 (February 2018): 4–27; Maria Nugent and Gaye Sculthorpe, ‘A Shield Loaded with History: Encounters, Objects and Exhibitions’, Australian Historical Studies 49, no. 1 (February 2018): 41.

3 J.V.S. Megaw, ‘“There’s a Hole in my Shield  … ”: A Textual Footnote’, Australian Archaeology 38, no. 1 (June 1994): 35–37.

4 For a fuller account of past and present understandings of the role of taxation in the history of collecting, see Daniel Simpson, The Royal Navy in Indigenous Australia, 1795–1855: Maritime Encounters and British Museum Collections (Cham: Springer, 2021), 189–217.

5 Ibid., 253.

6 On the post-1823 decline in reliability and utility of customs records, see below and Simpson, The Royal Navy, 211–14.

7 Richard Neville, A Rage for Curiosity: Visualising Australia 1788–1830 (Sydney: State Library of New South Wales, 1997).

8 Neil Macgregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2010).

9 Thomas, ‘A Case of Identity’.

10 Nicholas Thomas, ‘Museum Collections in Transit: Towards a History of the Artefacts of the Endeavour Voyage’, in Material Culture in Transit: Theory and Practice, ed. Zainabu Jallo (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023).

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 See, for example, Zoe Rimmer and Rebe Taylor, ‘An Analysis of the 2021 Apologies by the Royal Society of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community’, Australian Historical Studies 54, no. 1 (February 2023): 77–90.

14 Chris Gosden and Frances Larson, Knowing Things: Exploring the Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, 1884–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

15 Isobel MacDonald, ‘Counting When, Who and How: Visualizing the British Museum’s History of Acquisition through Collection Data, 1753–2019’, Journal of the History of Collections 35, no. 2 (July 2022): 4–5.

16 CUST and T, The National Archives [TNA].

17 Howard Morphy, Museums, Infinity and the Culture of Protocols (London: Routledge, 2019), 26.

18 John McAleer, ‘“The Troubles of Collecting”: William Henry Harvey and the Practicalities of Natural-History Collecting in Britain’s Nineteenth-Century World’, The British Journal for the History of Science 55, no. 1 (March 2022): 91.

19 Matthew Fishburn, ‘The Private Museum of John Septimus Roe, dispersed in 1842’, Archives of Natural History 47, no. 1 (April 2020): 166–82.

20 John Septimus Roe to William Roe, 6 June 1821, John Septimus Roe letters [hereafter JSRL], Series 05, State Library of New South Wales [hereafter SLNSW].

21 See Simpson, The Royal Navy, 189–217.

22 William Irving, ‘An Account of the Amount of Customs Duties Received on the Principal Articles of East India and China Produce Respectively; on an Annual Average of the Three Years Ending the 5th January 1812’, in Papers, &c. (East India Company), Fourth Part., Vol. X (London: House of Commons, 1812–13).

23 William Irving, ‘Return of Articles of Merchandize on which Duties of Customs Have Been Received, According to Finance Accounts, No. VIII., 1822’, in House of Commons Papers, vol. 12 (London: House of Commons, 1823).

24 CUST 4/1–94, TNA.

25 In 1823, ‘New Holland and South Sea Islands’ were treated as a single entity within this record set.

26 See Simpson, The Royal Navy, 191.

27 John Septimus Roe to William Roe, 26 February 1821, JSRL, Series 04, SLNSW.

28 John Septimus Roe to William Roe, 6 June 1821, JSRL, Series 05, SLNSW.

29 CUST 37/51–2, TNA.

30 Treasury Board, ‘Report on Annexed Memorial of Abraham Bell Regarding the Sale at an Unnecessarily Low Price of Goods Seized by Customs’, 7 August 1767, T 1/459: 136–139, TNA.

31 London Customs House, ‘For Sale, by Order of The Honourable the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs’, 9 December 1809, CUST 37/52: 18, TNA.

32 Ibid., 19.

33 London Customs House, ‘For Sale, by Order of The Honourable the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs’, 19 April 1810, CUST 37/51: 37, TNA.

34 John Septimus Roe to James Roe, 23 April 1823, JSRL, Series 05, SLNSW.

35 See Simpson, The Royal Navy, 257.

36 T and CUST, TNA.

37 Daniel Simpson, ‘Expeditionary Collections: Haslar Hospital Museum and the Circulation of Public Knowledge, 1815–1855’, in Mobile Museums, ed. Felix Driver, Mark Nesbitt, and Caroline Cornish (London: UCL Press, 2021), 149–77.

38 T 1, TNA.

39 T 2, TNA.

40 T 29, TNA.

41 T 11, TNA.

42 CUST 28, TNA.

43 See, for example, Joseph Banks to the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury, 10 December 1810, T 1/1164, TNA.

44 T 11/37, TNA.

45 William Neate Chapman to Christina Neate Chapman, 18 October 1791, William Neate Chapman letters, A 1974, SLNSW.

46 See Elizabeth Ellis, Rare and Curious: The Secret History of Governor Macquarie’s Collectors’ Chest (Sydney: State Library of New South Wales, 2010).

47 Bruce Buchan and Annemarie McLaren, ‘Edinburgh’s Enlightenment Abroad: Navigating Humanity as a Physician, Merchant, Natural Historian and Settler-Colonist’, Intellectual History Review 31, no. 4 (May 2020): 627–49.

48 David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol. 2. (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1802), 320.

49 Jamison is known to have been a passenger on the packet ship Duke of Kent, upon its departure from Rio de Janeiro. See Sibella Macarthur Onslow, ed., Some Early Records of the Macarthurs of Camden (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1914), 178; William Bullock, A Companion to Mr Bullock’s Museum (London: Henry Reynell, 1811), 7.

50 Object VI 151, Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin.

51 Bows and arrows were used throughout the Torres Strait.

52 T 11/39, TNA.

53 Collins, vol. 1. (1804).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [Grant Number DP200102212] ‘Mobilising Aboriginal Objects: Indigenous History in International Museums’, led by Dr Maria Nugent.