British Imperialism and its Legacies: Exploitation of nature

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Glasgow Museums holds many objects that relate to the exploitation of nature and land by representatives of the British Empire in the 1800s and 1900s. The British saw the world as theirs to control and collect, and their reasons for doing so varied: to increase the Empire’s reach, for economic gain, science, trophies or displays of wealth. Research by scientists, often funded directly by the government, helped the Empire expand geographically and grow economically.

Successful exploitation of natural resources required well-maintained harbours, roads, railways and inland waterways to transport goods and people around the Empire. Dredgers were used to widen and deepen waterways. They were also used to extract valuable material such as sand, gravel, gold, and tin, from water bodies in colonised countries for economic profit.

Many plants from colonised countries were new to British people, though indigenous people already understood their importance for health, trade and everyday use. The demand for, and trade in, plants and their products grew dramatically in Britain and the Empire, leading to devastation across the world. For instance, the cultivation of sugarcane and cotton was a major driving force behind the transatlantic slave trade and the exploitation of rubber in the early 1800s had a devastating impact on thousands of indigenous people in the Amazon region.

Plants, animals and minerals collected from across the Empire were sent back to British museums, including Glasgow Museums. Put on display, they showed people in Scotland the wealth and reach of the growing British Empire. Behind the scenes, these specimens were important for scientific research, as museum curators catalogued and organised the world by western scientific principles. Other specimens, collected at the same time, were gifted to Glasgow Museums when the collector died, or have only come to Glasgow Museums recently as people donate collections they’ve inherited or been gifted.

The topics below have been broken down thematically. They are all connected, and all contributed to the dark and cruel exploitation of people, land, and nature during the colonial period.

Broader term

British Imperialism and its Legacies

Narrower term

British Imperialism and its Legacies: Collecting zoology

British Imperialism and its Legacies: Economic Botany

British Imperialism and its Legacies: Models of Harbour and Extraction Dredgers

British Imperialism and its Legacies: Scientific research enabled by the Empire