The Czech traveler Emil Holub and his African collection Legacies of colonial aspirations and civilizing discourse

In the 1870s and 1880s the Czech traveler Emil Holub (1847-1902) undertook two journeys to the interior of South Africa, amassing extensive natural historical and ethnographic collections. He realized his journeys within the frame of the colonial aspirations of Austro-Hungary, but also the nationalist movement of the Czechs against the Habsburg dominance. The present text focuses especially on the collections Holub brought back from Africa, which have been displayed in various museums. Tied to the artifacts and the museums in which they are deposited is the inescapable heritage of colonial oppression, purposeful “othering”, and denigration of non-European peoples and cultures within the specific frame of Central European “colonialism without colonies” and discourses of colonial complicity. The text aims to reveal the complexity of nineteenth-century colonialism in its overlapping patterns of national identity and belonging, but also see the reflections of these patterns at present debates of Czech entanglement with European and global historical processes. MUSEA, 1, 2