Things of the Past

This Element explores the modern yearning for things of the past, from early modern antiquarianism to the contemporary art market. It tells a global story about scholars who, driven by this yearning, roamed the world and amassed many of its historical artefacts. Their motivation was not just pleasure or profit. They longed for a past that had been lost and strived to reconstruct world history anew. This rewriting of history unleashed heated debates, all over the world and raging for centuries. The debates concerned not only the past but also the present and the future. By revealing a strange and foreign past, many believed, the material remains opened a path to modernity. So, the Element is a journey into not only the history of historical scholarship, and its obsession with things, but also the modern condition and our relationship to the past as modern human beings.