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Europe
It was during the second half of the 19th century that museums began to proliferate in Europe; civic pride and the free education movement were among the causes of this development. About 100 opened in Britain in the 15 years before 1887; some 50 museums were established in Germany in the five years from 1876 to 1880; and, with the opening of the magnificent Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 1891, most of the imperial Habsburg collections were finally housed and displayed in one place. This was also a period of innovation. The Liverpool Museums in England, for example, began circulating specimens to schools for educational purposes; panoramas and habitat groups were used to facilitate interpretation. As first gas lighting and then electric lighting became available, museums extended their hours into the evenings to provide service to those unable to visit during the day.
South America
The increase in the number of museums was not, however, a peculiarity of Europe or North America. In South America particularly, new museums were founded both in the capital cities and in the provinces. Some of these were provided by universities, as in the case of the Geological Museum in Lima, Peru (1891), or the Geographical and Geological Museum at São Paulo, Brazil (1895). Others were created by provincial bodies: the regional museums at Córdoba (1887) and Gualeguaychu (1898), both in Argentina, and at Ouro Prêto, Brazil (1876); the Hualpen Museum in Chile (1882); and the Municipal Museum and Library at Guayaquil, Ecuador (1862). New specialist national museums also appeared in certain countries, while at Tigre, in Argentina, a maritime museum was founded in 1892. Early in the following century, memorial museums were created, including those dedicated to Bartolomé Mitre, a former president of Argentina, in Buenos Aires (1906) and to Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela (1911).
Asia
By this time the Indian Museum, in Kolkata, and what is now the National Museum, in Jakarta, were well-established institutions in Asia, but a number of new museums were appearing as well. In Japan a museum to encourage industry and the development of natural resources was opened in 1872; this provided the basis for the present-day Tokyo National Museum and National Science Museum (also in Tokyo). Although some learned-society museums existed in China in the late 19th century, the first museum in the strict sense of the word was the Nantong Museum in Jiangsu province, founded in 1905, to be followed within a decade by the National Museum of Chinese History in Beijing (the museum merged with the Museum of the Chinese Revolution in 2003 to create the National Museum of China) and the Beijiang Museum in Tianjin (now Tianjin Natural History Museum). The collections established in the Grand Palace at Bangkok in 1874 eventually became the Bangkok National Museum. The National Museum of Sri Lanka, in Colombo, opened to the public in 1877; the Sarawak Museum (now in Malaysia) opened in 1891; and the Peshawar Museum, in Pakistan, opened in 1907.
Africa
In central and southern Africa, museums were founded early in the 20th century. Zimbabwe’s national museums at Bulawayo and Harare (then known as Salisbury) were founded in 1901, the Uganda Museum originated in 1908 from collections assembled by the British District Commissioners, and the National Museum of Kenya (now part of the National Museums of Kenya) in Nairobi was commenced by the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society in 1909. Mozambique’s first museum, the Alvaro de Castro Natural History Museum in Maputo, was founded in 1913. Meanwhile in North Africa the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (founded 1835) had been relocated to its new building in 1902, and certain of the collections had been transferred to form two new institutions: the Museum of Islamic Art (1903) and the Coptic Museum (1908). In South Africa there was steady museum development in a number of the provinces—for example, in Grahamstown (1837), Port Elizabeth (1856), Bloemfontein (1877), Durban (1887), Pretoria (1893), and Pietermaritzburg (1903).