Retracing royal roots of a 160 year old specimen

Collections and culture

We have a thematic approach to our science research, which spans nine themes. One of these themes is Collections and Culture, which investigates the cultural and historical aspects of our world-leading collections.

By supporting humanities research, we encourage exploration, connecting specimens with broader cultural narratives and histories. This unlocks new information about the collection, which is useful to all researchers.

Updating labels and online catalogues enables us to acknowledge the complex histories of our collections, which have come from all over the world over several centuries. Scientific collections like ours are built with the knowledge and labour of diverse communities. This diversity has not always been fully understood because historically, different people’s contributions have not been equally valued and recorded.

The museum actively updates specimen data as research brings new information to light. Recent research, including re-examining Britain’s role in whaling and understanding how women controlled their own fertility during slavery, has given us new perspectives through which to understand specimens that have been part of the collection for centuries.

Uncovering hidden histories 

My research focuses on mammal collections at the Museum, specifically those collected in East Africa. Using archives, exhibition catalogues and often material from the specimens themselves, I uncover the rich histories behind how these specimens were made, transported and displayed in our galleries.

I trace relationships involved in natural historical collecting. Most collectors relied on a host of local expertise, knowledge and skill to do their collecting. In East Africa, hunters would travel in large groups of porters, skinners, field dressers, gun bearers, cooks, guides and scouts. Most of these East African individuals, though their work was essential to collecting, are not recognised in our records.

When looking through our collection of hoofed mammals known as ungulates, I found several specimens labelled with the name John Hanning Speke. Speke is well-known for his expeditions to the source of the Nile in the nineteenth century.

Curious about what his collecting practice was like and hoping to learn more about who else was involved in his expeditions, I turned to his book, Journey to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863).

I was surprised to find that he not only gave accounts of how he acquired the specimens in the Museum’s collection, but also detailed a close friendship with an East African royal, King Rumanika of Karagwe. His relationship with Rumanika led me to look for the type specimen in the collections. Once I identified it, I found that knowing the story of how it was acquired had transformed its meaning.

Royal roots in our collection

The Sitatunga, Tragelaphus spekii, is an elusive, swamp-dwelling antelope, known for its amphibious lifestyle, dense fur and two-pronged toes. Within our collection, we hold the type specimen, the official reference specimen for which the species was named.

Type specimens are important for scientists looking to name new species, but this one also provides important context for historians or cultural researchers.

Tragelaphus spekii is named after John Hanning Speke (1827-1864), who donated the type specimen in 1863. However, new research has shown its collecting history has royal roots.

Between December 1861 and January 1862, Speke spent two months in Karagwe, a kingdom in what is now Tanzania, on the way to Uganda, where he hoped to identify the source of the Nile. But to continue his journey into Uganda, he needed a good reference from Rumanika, the King of Karagwe.

To obtain this documentation, he formed a diplomatic relationship with King Rumanika centred around the exchange of animals. The Sitatunga formed part of their negotiations, as shown in his journal:

“Rumanika in the morning sent me a young male nzoe (antelope) which his canoe-men had caught in the high rushes at the head of the lake, by the king’s order, to please me; for I had heard this peculiar animal described in such strange ways at Kaze, both by Musa and the Arabs, I was desirous of having a look at one.”

“It proved to be closely allied to a water-boc found by Livingstone on the Ngami Lake; but, instead of being striped, was very faintly spotted, and so long were its toes, it could hardly walk on the dry ground; whilst its coat, also well adapted to the moist element it lived in, was long, and of such excellent quality that the natives prize it for wearing almost more than any other of the antelope tribe."

Rumanika’s gift was essential to Speke’s taxonomic work, but it was not recorded in the official documentation attached to the specimen. We can see that Speke explicitly credited Rumanika in scientific circles, such as in his correspondence with the Zoological Society of London in March 1864:

“King Rumanika, of Karagweh, ordered his boatmen to catch me a specimen. They procured me a young male alive, the skin of which I brought home. I kept him some days alive, feeding him papyrus-tops, the only thing he would eat. He was very awkward on the hard ground, his long toes being evidently only adapted to carry him along the swamps.”

“The king also gave me the horns of an adult Antelope. The skins of this animal are highly prized in Karagweh, Uganda, and Unyoro, and are worn by their kings and officers."

Consulting Speke’s journals and documentation enables us to understand that the Sitatunga was a cultural artefact as much as a scientific specimen.

Speke and Rumanika both understood that this gift was part of a performance of political power and a symbol of Rumanika’s kingship. Speke’s journal reveals that he met Rumanika on the lake shore, “dressed in a wrapper made of an nzoe antelope’s [Sitatunga] skin”.

These accounts show that Rumanika had given Speke not just a specimen, but a way of clothing himself like a king. Speke in return gave Rumanika scientific instruments, including binoculars and a compass, a revolver and the head of a rhinoceros.

Fur traces of the Sitatunga’s coat, remnants of the prized symbol of royal power that made this gift so special, are still visible on the frontlet of the specimen today.

Following these exchanges, Rumanika gave Speke a good reference for his journey to Uganda and extracted from Speke a promise to forge a political allegiance for him in Uganda.

Speke, transformed into an ambassador for Karagwe, gave Muteesa I, the King of Buganda, a kingdom in what is now Uganda, a set of rifles and made sure to hunt with him regularly to strengthen relationships between the two kings. Rumanika’s exchange of animals in this way drew Speke, furnished with the gifts of kingship, including the type specimen, into regional political machinations.

Amending our archives

Although this specimen was briefly assumed lost, I was able to use the description of the holotype from Speke’s notes to reidentify it. Through my research, I was able to create new labels to become part of the specimen and its history so that future generations of scientists and cultural researchers will be able to find out more about the connections that brought this specimen to our collection.

Re-labelling the specimen is an important step in recognising that individuals like Rumanika were active agents and not mere intermediaries in collecting. Rumanika exemplifies how East African natural historical knowledge and his own political agenda actively enabled the discovery of a species previously unknown to European scientists.

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