Encounters with the colonial: Dr Ernest Warren, science, and new representations of nature at the Natal Museum (1903-1913)

Abstract

Dr Ernest Warren, a British-trained zoologist, became Director of the Natal Government Museum in 1903. While Warren's identity as a progressive scientist was shaped in the metropolitan context, it was in the Natal Colony-later, the South African province of Natal-that he made his career. In doing so, Warren forged new physical and administrative connections between the museum and the newly conquered territory of Zululand with its game reserves, connections that were not without difficulty and ambivalence. After tracing Warren's intellectual pedigree, the cultural politics of museum display in the Natal Museum mammal halls are examined, together with the aesthetics of wildness, in terms of which Warren attempted to introduce to the colony new representations of nature. A further theme is the relationship between hunting and museum collecting, as well as the everyday social practices involved in building up a museum in a colonial context such as this one. Warren's long 'encounter with the Colonial' was in many respects a bruising one.