This book explores the life and work of Mary Elizabeth Barber, a British-born settler scientist who lived in the Cape during the nineteenth century. It provides a lens into a range of subjects within the history of knowledge and science, gender and social history, postcolonial, critical heritage and archival studies.
Tanja Hammel works in the History Department at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Her PhD dissertation, on which this monograph is based, received the annual faculty award for the humanities at the University of Basel in 2018.
1 Introduction.- Part I: African Experts and Science in the Cape.- 2 African Farmers and Medical Plant Experts.- 3 African Naturalists, Collectors, and Taxidermists.- Part II: From Providing Data to Forging New Practices and Theories.- 4 Gender, Class and Competition.- 5 Proving and Circulating the Theory of Natural Selection.- 6 Barber’s Forging Scientific Practices and Theories.- Part III: Negotiating Belonging through Science.- 7 Arguing with Artefacts, Biofacts and Organisms: Barber's Advocacy for 1820 Settlers’ Supremacy and Land Rights.- 8 Barber’s World of Birds as a Space of Gender Equality.- 9 Colonial Legacies in Post-Colonial Collections.- 10 ‘The fragments that are left behind’.
