Doing History in Public

Tag: Ceylon

  • 19. James Steuart’s box of oysters at the Museum of Natural History (1868)

    19. James Steuart’s box of oysters at the Museum of Natural History (1868)

    By Tamara Fernando (@TamaraFernando3) The historians’ job is akin to the detectives’: we ferret out clues, evaluate evidence and make deductions. But what do we do when trails run cold? My doctoral research is on the pearl fishery in the Gulf of Mannar. Sometime between 1820 and 1830, the painter Hippolyte Silvaf made twelve water-colours…

  • 22. Remora

    22. Remora

    By Tamara Fernando (@TamaraFernando3) Before the 1920s, visual renderings of the seafloor largely relied on drawings and engravings. This was true even in places where bodies routinely inhabited the underwater, such as the pearl fisheries of Ceylon. Here, photography did play a role: on the shore and on the decks of colonial steamers, British administrators…