How (and why) to use catalogs for historical enquiry : Fiji at the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879 and white male empire

Author / Creator

Lundén, Staffan, author

Available as

Online

Summary

This case study is intended to introduce undergraduate students to using catalogs as a primary source in historical research. It not only aims to offer practical guidance on how to go about doing s...

This case study is intended to introduce undergraduate students to using catalogs as a primary source in historical research. It not only aims to offer practical guidance on how to go about doing such an analysis but also seeks to address overarching questions on what historical research is for and what perspectives come into focus (or not) in an analysis. A catalog, like any source, is a product of a particular time and place and can thus offer valuable insights for historical enquiry. Catalogs, whether they are trade or auction catalogs, exhibition catalogs, or museum inventories, systematize and describe items according to cultural concepts. They are part of a cultural system of knowledge and representation. This applies to all sources, but a particular value of catalogs in scholarly research is that latent societal ordering principles and values often become manifest in them. Thus, a catalog is not a mere list, it is a window into ways of thinking. This case study will use a catalog produced by the Colony of Fiji for the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879 as an example of how to discern cultural values, ordering principles, and power hierarchies. It focuses on the representation of class, ethnicity, and gender in the catalog to peek at white male norms in a historical context.

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