For decades during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ships from Salem, Massachusetts, navigated the seas and their captains conducted trade and returned with treasures and artifacts for deposit in the East India Marine Society Museum. George H. Schwartz, an associate curator at the Peabody Essex Museum, traces how society members collected, exhibited, and interpreted materials from around the globe. An institutional history of the East India Marine Society Museum, Collecting the Globe is chock-full of appealing incidents and details.
Twenty-two merchant mariners founded the East India Marine Society in Salem in 1799 and the museum shortly thereafter. At the time, Salem was an active nexus in global trade networks, although it subsequently faded in importance as trade shifted to cities with deeper harbors and better railroad connections (Boston, New York City). The museum was free of charge and open on a regular basis; it offered an important and valued...
University of California Press