Hunters and Collectors

This book looks at a group of early collectors who worked in Southeast Asia during the late 19th and the first half of the 20th Century. Their travels in the region resulted in the formation of what was to become the Ethnology collection at the Raffles Library and Museum in Singapore. The collectors included naturalists, explorers, a businessman and a missionary who worked largely outside the bounds of the institution. This book explores what these early collectors acquired, whether they were simply treasure hunting or collecting with more scholarly purpose, and their approach to and motivation for acquiring cultural artefacts during this period. These questions continue to interest scholars, curators and collectors today, as part of the broader topics of 'colonial collecting' that has developed particularly in the field of anthropology over the past two and a half decades.