Chintz

Printed cotton fabrics were among the most important trade goods in exchange for enslaved people. This fragment is probably the only preserved piece that was produced specifically for this kind of exchange. Le lion et la chèvre, Manufactory Petitpierre & Cie, Nantes, around 1790, woodblock print on cotton

Swiss National Museum

Human trafficking

The group of figures shows the sale of an enslaved person. The figures’ dress style leaves open room for interpretation: it is not clear whether the work is to be interpreted as pro or anti-slavery. What we do know is that the owners and artisans of the porcelain manufactory had connections to abolitionist groups as well as to people who were involved in the slave trade, thus making a clear interpretation impossible. Menschenhandel, manufactory Kilchberg-Schooren, around 1775, porcelain, painted

Swiss National Museum

Maryland

Karl Krüsi (1855–1925) worked on Swiss plantations in the Dutch East Indies. In 1881 he bought his own estate and named it after his wife Mary. He sold up in 1893, and with his fortune he had Villa Sumatra built in what is now Zurich’s Sumatrastrasse. Manager House in Deli, Karl Krüsi, Sumatra, 1885

Swiss National Museum

‘The wee planter’

In the plantation economy on Sumatra, then part of the Dutch colonial territory, Swiss as white Europeans benefit from colonial arrangements such as access to land or cheap labour. Swiss tobacco plantation administrator from Stäfa with his son, Kotari, 1921

Private property

Symbol of imperial power

The sun helmet identified its wearer as a colonial ruler. It was worn for protection against the heat and other dangers. The colonial dress code also served to set the colonizers apart from the colonized. Pith helmet, probably Congo, late 19th c.

Musée d'ethnographie de Genève

Arnold Heim

This Swiss geologist (1882–1965) conducted research on every continent. Many of his trips were funded by oil companies. Over the course of his career, he became an environmentalist and advocate of decolonization. Virunga Expedition, Lake Mutanda (Uganda), 1954

ETH-Bibliothek Zürich

Colonial science

At the end of the 19th century, Fritz and Paul Sarasin undertook research in British-controlled Ceylon and Celebes in the Dutch East Indies; they also went big-game hunting, however. The calf of this slain elephant was delivered to Basel Zoo. The Sarasins in Sri Lanka, 1883–1907

ETH-Bibliothek Zürich

New authority for Swiss ‘racial research’

Marc-Rodolphe Sauter (1914–1983) kept racial research going in Geneva. In his research, he tried to prove that the European population was divided into separate ‘races’, not least in an attempt to lend Swiss racial research new authority after WWII. Marc Roldolphe Sauter, before 1952

Bibliothèque de Genève

Toppling monuments

In 2021 the Geneva-based artist Mathias C. Pfund placed his upended and reduced-scale copy of the statue of David de Pury (1709–1786), who was involved in the ‘triangular trade’ and who therefore had a hand in the trade with enslaved people alongside the original that was raised in Neuchatel in 1855. Mathias C. Pfund, Great in the concrete, 2022, Bronze

Swiss National Museum

View of the exhibition

Swiss National Museum

View of the exhibition

Swiss National Museum

View of the exhibition

Swiss National Museum

View of the exhibition

Swiss National Museum

View of the exhibition

Swiss National Museum