Conflict & Society Seminar 1 (WEBINAR)

Image source: Thomas Stamford Raffles. 1817. History of Java, volume 1 (London: Black, Parbury, and Allen, Booksellers to the Hon. East-India Company and John Murray) page 90.

Colonial plunder of material culture represents a continuing legal, ethical and political conundrum. This paper examines the East India Company’s plunder of the Yogyakarta Craton in 1812, which resulted in the seizure of £500,000 worth of silver coins (£415,800,000 2021 value) and US$1,150,000 worth of the Sultan’s private possessions (2021 value). Some of these objects became the Raffles Collection in the British Museum, the British Library, and the Royal Collection Trust. This paper examines the context and legality of the Raffles Collection and the redress of colonial property crimes.

Find out more about the Conflict & Society Seminars here.

Meet the Speakers:

Dr Gareth Knapman is a Research Fellow on Indigenous Repatriation at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University and the author of several articles, chapters and books, his latest being Settler Colonialism and Usurping Malay Sovereignty in Singapore (CUP, 2021).

Dr Sadiah Boonstra is post-doctoral researcher in the Pressing Matter: Ownership, Value and the Question of Colonial Heritage in Museums program at VU University Amsterdam and Honorary Fellow at Melbourne University. Her research and curatorial interests focus on the history, heritage, and art of colonial and contemporary Indonesia.

Image credit: Maarten Nauw.