 From Ports of Empire to Capitals of Culture: Museums of Slavery and Colonial HistoryAlice Mah Chapter 4 in Port Cities and Global Legacies, 2014, pp 88-109 from Palgrave Macmillan Abstract: Abstract Former port cities of empire and colonialism are steeped in material vestiges of their past. From old maritime waterfronts to grand mercan tile architecture, from street names to statues, and from monuments to museums: there are reminders at every step; one only has to look. These sites are what the historian Pierre Nora (1989) calls-sites of memory’ (lieux de memoire)—sites which evoke collective memory, when there has been an incomplete break with the past, where continuities, or legacies, remain. This chapter focuses on museums of slavery and colonial his tory as sites of ambivalent memory and identity in the port cities of Liverpool, Marseille, and New Orleans. As Aldrich (2005: 8) argues in Vestiges of Colonial Empire in France: Perhaps ambivalence is the best way to describe attitudes to the colonies—a mixture of nostalgia, residual pride, misgivings about the worth of the effort, sometimes shame about what was done, occa sional outrage. Examining monuments, museums and other markers of the colonial patrimony is a way of charting and understanding that ambivalence. Keywords: National Museum; Collective Memory; Moral Condemnation; Slave Trade; Port City (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-28314-6_4 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan |
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