placesRoom 1: Enlightenment, the British Museum

This is the room about how the rest of the museum filled up. Sir Hans Sloane's cabinets are here; the museum's own gallery text says his collection, with several additional libraries, became the foundation of the British Museum, established by Act of Parliament on 7 June 1753.

The museum does not hedge about what else the period was. Its own page for this room says the Enlightenment "witnessed the aggressive global expansion of European colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade" and that "This room's displays reflect the close connection between Enlightenment and empire." Under Ritual and religion it writes that "Christian mistrust of superstition and idols, rituals and magic led to ignorance about other religions", that scholars set out to dispel that by studying the religions they met, collecting religious artefacts and grouping gods into families — and that "Much of this activity took place within the context of colonialism." Under Trade and discovery it names the East India and Royal Africa Companies, "whose wealth was made possible through the use of enslaved labour".

One object in this room carries a live claim. The museum's catalogue places a bark-and-wood shield, registration number Oc1978,Q.839, on display in Room 1, Trade & Discovery, Wall Press 96; it was donated by the Lords of the Admiralty and first registered and given a Q number in 1978. Rodney Kelly, a Gweagal man from Bermagui, began campaigning for the shield's return after it appeared in the exhibition Encounters at the National Museum of Australia, 27 November 2015 to 28 March 2016, and travelled to Britain three times, once in 2016 and twice in 2017; the chair of the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council, Noeleen Timbery, has backed the return. The British Museum has refused, on the ground that British law does not permit it to hand the object over.

The identification is itself contested, and the museum says so on its own object page. Its curator's comments open: "Once thought to have been obtained on Captain Cook's first voyage to the Pacific, when he visited Botany Bay near present day Sydney, New South Wales, in 1770." The record now dates the shield "1771 (or earlier)" and finds the match with Sydney Parkinson's and John Frederick Miller's drawings only an apparent one. Inference — an object whose owner and whose date are both argued over is the right object to meet first in a museum, and this room is where a reader of this atlas should start before walking to the Egyptian cases.

Open with the rest of the museum, free, and unchanged in layout. The museum's own warning stands beside its hours: "Occasionally we may need to close galleries at short notice." This project has not stood in the room.