How Power Shaped Human Categories
The British Museum is more than a collection of old objects; it is a monument to how power shapes our view of history. When science journalist Angela Saini visits, she sees how the building’s grand columns were designed to make Britain look like the natural successor to the great civilizations of the past. By gathering millions of items from across the globe, the empire created a story where it sat at the top of human achievement. This narrative suggests that the winners of history earned their place through some innate quality, but the truth is that these collections exist here simply because the British military had the strength to take them.
During the same era that these treasures were being collected, European scientists began creating the racial categories we still use today. In the late 1700s, a doctor named Johann Friedrich Blumenbach divided humans into five groups. These labels were often arbitrary and remain confusing. For example, Mostafa Hefny, a man from Egypt with dark skin, has spent years in a legal battle because United States rules classify anyone from North Africa as white. Saini notes that her own identity shifts depending on the definition: she is legally Caucasian by old standards, politically black according to her union, and brown to her neighbors. These boundaries were drawn by people in power to justify their own status.
History shows that no group remains dominant forever, though every powerful society tries to claim its success is natural. In ancient times, Egyptians depicted themselves as superior to their neighbors, yet later, the Kushites from Sudan conquered Egypt and adopted their culture. The objects in museums are silent witnesses to the fact that power is temporary. While we often look for our own ancestors in museum galleries to find a sense of pride, we forget that these hierarchies were invented to keep people in their place. History is not a straight line of progress led by one group, but a changing map of human experience shaped by whoever holds power at the time.
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