Mahogany, Enslaved Africans, Miskito Indigenous Peoples at Chiswick House, Kenwood and Marble Hill, London
Mahogany, Enslaved Africans, Miskito Indigenous Peoples at Chiswick House, Kenwood and Marble Hill, London
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council, Collaborative Doctoral Partnership
Partners: English Heritage / Historic England
Supervisors: Professor Joy Porter | Tessa Kilpatrick: Marble Hill House
People: Hannah Cusworth
This doctoral project will create the first sustained interdisciplinary study of the provenance and overlapping historical contexts of the mahogany within important U.K. historic sites. It examines mahogany as a transatlantic intercultural commodity and environmentally sensitive trade good. With the aim of improving awareness and understanding of the diverse, contested and hidden histories that surround mahogany within historic interiors, its specific focus is the mahogany cared for by English Heritage, including that at Marble Hill, Chiswick House, Kenwood House, Brodsworth Hall and Audley End.
This exciting new project brings together fields of study not conventionally in dialogue, specifically, environmental and deforestation history, furniture history, architectural history, Miskito Indigenous histories, slavery, the history of international commercial trade, and the movement of commodities within an interconnected Atlantic space.
Through examination of account books, ledgers, slave records and Indigenous oral traditions and study of archives in the United Kingdom, Belize, Jamaica and the United States, this project uses mahogany to connect and reveal the diverse histories embedded within the collections of key U.K. historic sites.
This project is now under the supervision of Professor Jason Dittmer at University College London.
Research Programmes
Connecting Cultures
A collaborative project revealing how historic sites can position themselves as global crossroads, enabling multiple global publics to connect their lived experience with them.
Diplomacy and Treaties
International collaboration revealing globally significant cultures of diplomacy between the Crown, the Haudenosaunee and their neighbours in North America.
Digital Storytelling
Digital resources that involve the public, advance research, energise teaching, and drive knowledge exchange, built in partnership with the UK’s foremost research software engineers.
Resource Use and Environmental Futures
Water Cultures in Conflict at Pebble Mine, Bristol Bay, Alaska
Political Ecologies
Timely interventions that examine the power relations between Indigenous actors and the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.
Completed Projects
Timely interventions that examine the power relations between Indigenous actors and the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.