A Plane Ride and the Pitt Rivers

By Camden Baxter

My journey to London began in the middle seat of the very last row of an overbooked flight that I was thrilled just to have a spot on. It was a twohour trip to Atlanta, and after bouncing my head off of the rear bulkhead trying to recline my seat, I came to understand that Delta’s margins couldn’t accommodate the inclusion of a handful of inches of space behind the last row to permit the seats to lean back. My posture would be ramrod-straight, fit for a soldier, whether or not I wanted it to be.

There is one thing you should know about me: I have a profound talent for annoying those with the misfortune to have been seated next to me on flights. It is an inescapable truth that I am debilitatingly gregarious, incapable of sharing space with even a total stranger without attempting to strike up some sort of conversation. Often, once pleasantries are exchanged and our mutual existences acknowledged, we’ll resign ourselves to our respective in-flight entertainment. Others respond with a brusque “fine, thanks” (regardless of the question) and make resoundingly clear their preference for solitude in that moment. The man seated to my right, however, was an example of the less common third case: a stranger as willing to partake in the stilted mile-high social scene as myself.

“Where are you headed?”, I ventured.

“Sydney” was the reply, in an accent of obvious anglosphere origin but whose exact provenance was uncertain.

“You an Aussie?”

“Nope, British.” That probably should have been obvious, I thought.

Despite that blunder, the conversation continued. “Why are you going to Atlanta, to get to Sydney?” I wondered out loud.

“That’s the beautiful thing about the military, mate – I’m not allowed to worry about those things” was the reply.

“King Charles really sent you the wrong way to save fifty quid?”, I quipped – and the tension dissipated with the man’s chuckle at my admittedly cheap joke.

His name was Blair, and he was a British military officer with the privilege of a deployment at Fort Leavenworth. His trip to Sydney, he told me, was under the auspices of Five Eyes, the anglosphere’s intelligence-sharing program that was hosting a conference down-under. I asked him what he thought of Kansas, and his response was not what I had expected from a man living next door to an onshore-Guantanamo in the middle of the Great Plains. Not only did his kids love their school, he said, but he found the people of Kansas’s salt-of-theearth demeanor and emphasis on honest, hard work reminiscent of his hometown, Birmingham. I was shocked to hear that, of all the places in America he’d been, my home state was his favorite. Clearly, we got along well, and we ended up talking almost the entire flight. At one point, he mentioned the ease of accessing information and contacting other military intelligence officers through Five Eyes’ online software, which he called “Spy Facebook.” I presume that’s what he was using when, during a brief lapse in the conversation, he angled his iPad toward the window to hide it from view and studied the screen intensely while complaining about the in-flight internet.

The questions went the other way, too. Blair asked me about where I was headed, and the excitement and speed of his speech noticeably grew when I told him London. I explained the study abroad program, and listed some of our planned activities. “Oh, and we’re spending a day in Oxford,” I mentioned at the very end, almost as an afterthought. His eyes lit up at the mention of the storied city.

“Oh man, listen – there’s this one place in Oxford you’ve gotta go to, I see it every time I visit. It’s incredible. It’s called the Pitt Rivers.”

“What’s that?”

“Basically, Pitt Rivers was this British anthropologist that traveled around the world and stole everything.” (The actual phrase he used here isn’t fit to print).

“Wasn’t that most of them?”

“Yes, but he was a thief’s thief. His collection is housed in the back of the natural history museum at Oxford, I can’t recommend it enough.”

He launched into a description of the museum’s display pieces, organized not by culture of origin, but by type of object. The result, he said, was a cross-section of objects of similar purpose and meaning from all over the world. Dolls, smoking devices, representations of religious idols, weapons – countless items, probably deeply important to the cultures from which they were expropriated, all under one roof. Above all else, he said, the museum was a place of conflict. The British Museum’s laundry list of stolen statues and carvings are one thing, but there is a unique quality of personal items – things used by normal people, every day – that drives home the reality of imperial plunder. His countenance grew sterner as he acknowledged that his interest and curiosity was quintessentially tokens of good luck and remembrance, religious iconography, medical tools, and so much more. Ceremonial clothing adorned mannequins; burial artifacts sat in glass cases. There is a disconcerting feeling that comes merely with being in the presence a collection of misbegotten artifacts; confronting one’s fascination with it is another thing altogether. I was transfixed yet horrified; whether transfixed by the horror or horrified by my transfixion, I didn’t know.

The museum has added signs in recent years acknowledging the work it is yet to do in confronting its imperialist past, but these admissions feel nothing if not incongruous. The scene is so thoroughly soaked in the rotten norms of a bygone era that to even concede culpability as if atonement is achievable while its doors remain open comes off as farcical. Yet, in spite of this, I spent nearly three hours in the collection. As torn as I was, it is undeniable that nowhere else on Earth will one have the opportunity to experience the products of so many different cultures and histories – unduly obtained or not – in one place. To fail to avail myself of that chance seemed in its own way disrespectful. I left the Pitt Rivers with a cocktail of thoughts and emotions sitting heavy in my morbid, a sick fascination with things whose fraught origins make it even harder to peel your eyes off of them. I decided in this moment that I would have to see the Pitt Rivers for myself, to corroborate Blair’s recollection.

The collection lived up to the recommendation. Never before have I encountered an array of artifacts as diverse – geographically and temporally – as I did in the Pitt Rivers. Charms, stomach that I can honestly say I had never before experienced. To start, there was the sort of buzz that prolonged academic intrigue and stimulation brings me; the hum of endorphins and mental fatigue reminiscent of the effects of an actual, physical workout. Underlying this satisfaction, though, was a somberness that is difficult to put my finger on. I wasn’t guilty; I certainly don’t feel as though I incurred any fault from merely visiting the collection. Yet I can’t claim that the gravity of what I had just witnessed didn’t affect me at some level. I think that one strikes a bargain upon entering the Pitt Rivers – you acknowledge and, to an extent, internalize the vast amount of harm you are about to bear witness to in exchange for an immersive museum experience that is truly visceral, to the point of discomfort. That conflict stewed inside of me on the bus ride back to the hotel. The raw humanity – and the lack thereof – is a new thing entirely to confront.

By Camden Baxter

It did not take long for Austin and I to establish ourselves as denizens of the pub on the ground floor of the Strathmore. Its rustic character was quintessentially English – the richly stained woodwork and bar top beneath mounted paintings of the building’s original gentry owners left no doubt as to which part of the world we were in. It would have been doing our London onslaught. The game wasn’t going well and later ended in a double-digit loss. We weren’t paying much attention, though – our company in the pub was far too fascinating to ignore. On one side, two lovely British couples went back and forth with us on any manner of subjects, from American politics to the university system. The two men experience a disservice to fail to avail ourselves of near-nightly lounges in a place such as this – where the conversation effortlessly flowed between friends and strangers alike; and where the utter British-ness of it all permeated every cubic inch. Besides, there is a unique camaraderie that sharing a drink with someone brings. Regardless of whether not you knew them beforehand, thought anything they had to say was worth listening to, or ever wanted to see them again, you have at the very least sat down and enjoyed a pint along with their company. I approached this pub not as a tippler’s utopia, but a place to get a ‘real’ cross-section of Britain. A place to sit down and chat and learn from people with unfamiliar backgrounds and lives, and pick their brains and hopefully become a more well-rounded international citizen in the process.

The night of the KU-Texas Big XII tournament game, Austin and I huddled around my laptop and watched the Jayhawks’ rudderless offense flounder against Texas’s defensive had met as musicians in Britain’s most prestigious military band, and the effortless banter them and their wives tossed at both us and each other made us feel as though we had known them for a lifetime. We made a toast and shared a drink (or two). They were particularly fond of Corona. While I regaled them with tales of the American Greek life system – which, by the way, is utterly confounding to anyone not habituated to it –Austin found himself in a heated discussion with two men on the other side of the room, seated next to the mantle. They were certified Tories, and their politics ran aground against Austin’s far-less conservative bent. My own conversation turned to politics. We discussed the Federal system, the constraints on government power in each respective country, and the normative question of what the role of a government even is. We agreed on most points from a policy perspective – but what fascinated me the most were the starkly different approaches to that last normative question. Admittedly, things had gotten a bit hazy by this point, but my main takeaway was that even in Britain, the European nation most analogous to my own in the political sense, the baseline support for the notion that government should directly intervene in society to improve outcomes is an order of magnitude higher than in the U.S. Accustomed to programs like the NHS, a place like America, where the paradigm is tilted toward the “everyone is expected to figure out their own stuff, on their own” approach, seems beyond the pale. But they also spoke of English-ness as a more tangible thing than how I would describe the feeling of being an American – I picked up on a sense of national uniformity that didn’t really fit with my own experience in the States. This would end up as a common theme of the talks I had in this pub.

The next night, a German father and son joined Austin and I in the pub. The son was our age, named Reuben. The usual pleasantries exchanged, we shared drinks and again took to discussing politics. Reuben was a socialist – much views on cultural tolerance, Reuben’s perspective was sharply conservative even though his views on social policy were extremely progressive. I think there’s a disconnect with the way Americans discuss European politics, and these conversations really drove that home. European perspectives on national identity and the role of government stood in stark contrast to my experience as an American. It’s easy to harp on the inadequacy of American social supports in relation to their European counterparts, but those arguments ignore the fact that we are astonishingly diverse in comparison to even the least-homogeneous European states. The cultural uniformity that someone like Reuben treasured is much harder to come by, as is the generous social policy that it undergirds. I learned more about European politics in those few hours than I had from all of my previous reading, There’s just something about enjoying a further left than myself. By all accounts, he should be considered a progressive. Yet I found it startling how, despite being in favor of a sweeping welfare state, he didn’t really seem that progressive, especially when discussing other countries. I think this reveals a truth about European politics, and about why their societies are more able to sustain robust social safety nets than the U.S. Reuben openly spoke down on other nationalities, making quips about the Italians (among others) and commenting on the German identity. His country is smaller and more culturally homogeneous than mine – and, it felt, insular. In other words, Germans support the types of redistributive policies the U.S. has for decades shunned because there’s a sense of uniformity in cultural values. Reuben is able to see himself in every other German, and is therefore much more comfortable paying higher taxes to support them. Yet this generosity does not extend to those outside of his cultural group. By American standards, it’s paradoxical – even by our own (questionable) pint with someone and sharing cultural values and stories that gives a special insight into what makes different people – and nations –tick. Of all my London experiences, I will treasure the time spent in the pub for its immersion in different political systems and the valuable insights it brought me.

Favorite piece you saw in a museum? Elgin Marbles

Did you ride the new Elizabeth line? Yes

One thing you wish you had time for? Tate Modern

What was your beginning of class nickname?

Daniel Mirakian is a freshman at KU from Olathe, KS. He’s studying Economics and is active in the Salt Company, Beta Alpha Psi, and the scholarship halls. He spends his time with friends and family, playing, thinking, and learning. He most enjoyed the parks and historic sites of London and surrounding cities.

Favorite Museum Piece: Dodo

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