2024 Theses Doctoral

Co-Collecting Tapa: Redefining Robert Louis Stevenson’s Collection of Barkcloth in Samoa and Beyond, 1888-1894

Merkin, Sophia

In 1890, famed Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson settled with his family at an estate called Vailima, outside Apia, Samoa, following two years of cruising around the Pacific. While in Oceania, the family assembled a large collection of tapa, or barkcloth, from various islands, the majority of which were received as gifts from Indigenous associates, staff, and dignitaries. These textiles are evidence of, witnesses to, and participants in a remarkably global and interwoven history of Victorian-era colonial exchange.

My dissertation utilizes this suite of objects to reposition Stevenson’s legacy in the region as well as to challenge existing methodological norms in the history of collecting, expanding the possibilities of how we determine provenance in the colonial Pacific. Drawing on the framework of collaborative collecting, or co-collecting, established by Sean Mallon, I expand the attribution of this collection to multiple actors, recognizing many proactive Pacific Islanders who strategically gave the family gifts of barkcloth, including chief Mata’afa Iosefo.

I also argue that Stevenson’s wife Fanny should be viewed as a passionate collector of barkcloth and I situate her activities in a broader conversation about gender and the controls frequently imposed on female collectors. I turn in closing to contemporary Samoan writers and thinkers, centering their explorations of Stevenson’s legacy in Samoa. The tapas I center are revelatory objects, and studying their exchange illuminates their givers and receivers, as well as the social and cultural networks in which they circulated.