In this talk we will discuss William Blathwayt as an imperial agent, as a collector and a commissioner of works.

Speaker

Dr Bertie Mandelblatt
Curator of Maps and Prints, John Carter Brown Library

For March’s talk, we’re excited to welcome Dr Bertie Mandelblatt (Brown University, John Carter Brown Library) to speak on the theme: William Blathwayt: Dyrham Park, its Collections and Early English Empire.

Through his association with the Plantations Office, the Board of Trade and the Privy Council over three decades in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, William Blathwayt was intimately associated with the expanding world of English colonies, both westward across the Atlantic Ocean and eastward to the Indian subcontinent and beyond.

The collections of Blathwayt’s country house at Dyrham Park provide a perspective on the globalizing world he was instrumental in creating, reflecting the economic and commercial ties the Bristol region had with the expanding Atlantic economy. One exemplary item historically drawn from these collections is the Blathwayt Atlas, which has been in the collections of the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island (USA) for over a century.

In this talk, Dr Mandelblatt will discuss William Blathwayt as an imperial agent, as a collector and indeed as a commissioner of works that drew from and revealed the  global networks of empire that Blathwayt and his social and political circles sought to strengthen and intensify.

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Events in this series

Exploring the past lecture series

The Trickster: From Oral History to Literature to Screen

28 January, 19:00

The East India Company and Country Houses in the Welsh Marches

10 December, 19:00

Caribbean and West African Lives in British Ports

12 November, 19:00