An exploration of headhunting and the collection of heads for European museums in the context of colonial wars, from the 1870s to the 1930s. The book offers a new understanding of the mutually dependent interaction between indigenous peoples and colonial powers, and how collected remains became regarded as objects of wider significance.

Auteur
RICARDO ROQUE is Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, Australia. He works on the history and anthropology of colonialism, human sciences, and cross-cultural contact in the Portuguese-speaking world. He has published extensively on crime and rebellion in British India, including Thuggee: Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India (2007) and The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising (2010).

Contenu
Illustrations& Maps Abbreviations Glossary Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: ENCOUNTERS WITH PARASITES Parasitism in Colonial Interactions The Order of Ceremonial Government The Circulatory System of Colonial Headhunting PART II: SKULLS AND HISTORIES Trajectories of Human Skulls in Museum Collections Human Skulls as Anthropological Objects Histories and Classification in Timorese Anthropology Collecting and the Dramas of Colonial Hostility Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index