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‘Shrieking Savages’ and ‘Men of Milder Customs’

2012; Routledge; Volume: 47; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00223344.2011.653052

1469-9605

Hilary Howes,

History of Science and Natural History

Abstract Adolf Bernhard Meyer (1840–1911), a German-Jewish medical scientist, naturalist and museum director, travelled and collected in northwest New Guinea between March and July 1873. He was one of the first German-born naturalists to visit New Guinea and the first to publish extensively in German on his field experiences there. Though his subsequent career as a museum director was built on the scientific results and collections from this expedition, after his death the expedition itself was largely forgotten and the publications resulting from it — including a lengthy travelogue and works on New Guinean physical anthropology, language and religious beliefs — were ignored or discredited. This paper re-examines this neglected corpus of scholarship and considers the ways in which Meyer's encounters with indigenous New Guineans influenced his contributions to discussions, in the European metropoles, of racial difference. On the one hand, Meyer's perceptions of ‘Papuan’ physical and cultural identity were shaped by his pre-voyage readings, particularly of works by the British traveller-naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and the German psychologist and ethnologist Theodor Waitz, and by the constraints, on his post-voyage publications, of genre and discourse. On the other hand, these perceptions were constantly challenged in the field by his actual encounters with indigenous New Guineans and by the diversity and unexpectedness of their physical appearances, initiatives, demeanours and actions. Acknowledgements This paper is drawn from research conducted for the author's doctoral thesis, which was written in association with the Australian Research Council Discovery Project on ‘European Naturalists and the Constitution of Human Difference in Oceania: Crosscultural Encounters and the Science of Race’, based in the Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (now School of Culture, History and Language) at The Australian National University, under the direction of Bronwen Douglas and Chris Ballard. The author would also like to thank Bronwen Douglas, Vicki Luker and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. Notes 1 Inverted commas are included on first mention of problematic terms such as ‘Papuan’ and ‘Negrito’ and are implied thereafter. 2 Petra Martin, ‘Meyer, Adolph [sic] Bernhard’, in Sächsische Biografie, ed. Institut für Sächsische Geschichte und Volkskunde e.V., available online at http://www.isgv.de/saebi (accessed 14 August 2008). 3 This applies not only to studies of German colonial rule, including Peter J. Hempenstall, Pacific Islanders under German Rule: a study in the meaning of colonial resistance (Canberra 1978) and Stewart Firth, New Guinea under the Germans (Carlton, Vic. 1982), but to accounts of particular individuals and expeditions, e.g. Hans Fischer, Die Hamburger Südsee-Expedition: Über Ethnographie und Kolonialismus (Frankfurt am Main 1981); Sven Mönter, Following a South Seas Dream: August Engelhardt and the Sonnenorden (Auckland 2008); Marion Melk-Koch, Auf der Suche nach der menschlichen Gesellschaft: Richard Thurnwald (Berlin 1989); Andrea E. Schmidt, Paul Wirz: Ein Wanderer auf der Suche nach der „wahren Natur” (Basel 1998); to historical overviews, notably Hermann Joseph Hiery (ed.), Die deutsche Südsee 1884–1914: Ein Handbuch (Paderborn 2001); and to critical studies of European-Oceanian contacts, especially Karl Neumann, Not the Way it Really Was: constructing the Tolai past (Honolulu 1992). 4 Although German scientific, mercantile and missionary engagement with the Pacific region was already well established by the mid-19th century, the former received significant impetus post-unification through increased construction of new museums and the formation of imperial agencies which supported these museums’ collection ventures. See Rainer F. Buschmann, Anthropology's Global Histories: the ethnographic frontier in German New Guinea, 1870–1935 (Honolulu 2009), 12–16; Hermann Joseph Hiery, ‘Zur Einführung: die Deutschen und die Südsee’, in Hiery, Die Deutsche Südsee, 1–24; Horst Gründer, ‘Die historischen und politischen Voraussetzungen des deutschen Kolonialismus’, in Hiery, Die Deutsche Südsee, 27–58, especially 27–8. 5 Makar Ivanovich Ratmanov, quoted in Elena Govor, Twelve Days at Nuku Hiva: Russian encounters and mutiny in the South Pacific (Honolulu 2010), 15. 6 Govor, Twelve Days at Nuku Hiva, 18–19, 249; Adelbert von Chamisso, ‘Bemerkungen und Ansichten von dem Naturforscher der Expedition’, in Otto von Kotzebue, Entdeckungs-Reise in die Süd-See und nach der Berings-Strasse … , 3 vols (Weimar 1821), III, 3–179. 7 Alfred Dove, ‘Forster: Johann George Adam F.’, in Historische Commission bei der Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.), Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (Leipzig 1878), VII, 171–81, here 172; George Forster, A Voyage Around the World, 2 vols, ed. Nicholas Thomas and Oliver Berghof (Honolulu 2000), I, 425, note 1; Georg Forster, A Voyage Round the World in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop, Resolution … , 2 vols (London 1777); Johann Reinhold Forster, Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World … (London 1778). 8 Bronwen Douglas, ‘“Novus Orbis Australis”: Oceania in the science of race, 1750–1850’, in Bronwen Douglas and Chris Ballard (eds), Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the science of race 1750–1940 (Canberra 2008), 102–3. 9 J. Modera, Verhaal van eene Reize naar en langs de Zuid-Westkust van Nieuw-Guinea … (Haarlem 1830), 1–2; Arthur Wichmann, Entdeckungsgeschichte von Neu-Guinea (1828 bis 1885), 2 vols (Leiden 1909–12), II, 5. 10 Salomon Müller and John Yeats, ‘Contributions to the knowledge of New Guinea’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 28 (1858), 264–72; Wichmann, Entdeckungsgeschichte, II, 12. 11 Wichmann, Entdeckungsgeschichte, II, 120–2, 124–7. 12 H.A. Bernstein, ‘Mededeelingen nopens reizen in den Indischen Archipel (1864)’, Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 17 (1869), 79–109; S.C.J.W. van Musschenbroek (ed.), ‘Dagboek van Dr. H.A. Bernstein's laatste reis van Ternate naar Nieuw-Guinea … ’, Bijdrage tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 4th series, 7 (1883), 1–258; cf. C.E. Meinicke, ‘Dr. Bernstein's Reisen in den nördlichen Molukken’, Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes' geographischer Anstalt … (hereafter Petermanns Mittheilungen), 19 (1873), 206–16. 13 C.B.H. von Rosenberg, ‘Verhaal eener reis naar de Papoeasche eilanden Misool, Salawatie, Batanta en Waigeoe’, Natuurkundliche Tijdschrift van Nederland-Indië, 24 (1862), 363–402; idem, Reistochten naar de Geelvinkbaai … (s’Gravenhage 1875); idem, Der Malayische Archipel (Leipzig 1878); idem, ‘La grande Baie du Geelvink’; ‘Les îles Schouten’, Annales de l’Extrème Orient, 1 (1878–9), 193–6, 297–300; Wichmann, Entdeckungsgeschichte, II, 111–12, 138–40, 142. 14 Freerk C. Kamma,‘Dit wonderlijke Werk’: het probleem van de communicatie tussen oost en west … , 2 vols (Oegstgeest 1977), I, 42–6, 73–6; Danilyn Rutherford, ‘The Bible meets the idol: writing and conversion in Biak, Irian Jaya, Indonesia’, in Fenella Cannell (ed.), The Anthropology of Christianity (Durham and London 2006), 255–60; Wichmann, Entdeckungsgeschichte, II, 88. 15 Arthur Wichmann's comprehensive review of historical contacts with New Guinea mentions a handful of other ephemeral, accidental and fictional German visitors during this period (Ibid., 93–4, 127–8, 138). 16 Otto Finsch, Neu-Guinea und seine Bewohner (Bremen 1865), v, vii; letter from idem to Illustrirte Zeitung, 29/10/1864, Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig, A/747/2006. See also the review of Neu-Guinea und seine Bewohner in Petermanns Mittheilungen, 11 (1865), 319. Finsch cited two German works: Karl Ernst von Baer, Über Papuas und Alfuren … (St Petersburg 1859) and Karl Andree, ‘Die Torresstraße, Neu-Guinea und der Louisiade-Archipelagus’, Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde, 2 (1854), 433–68. 17 Martin, ‘Meyer, Adolph [sic] Bernhard’, available online at http://www.isgv.de/saebi (accessed 14 August 2008). 18 John Gascoigne, ‘The German enlightenment and the Pacific’, in Larry Wolff and Marco Cipolloni (eds), The Anthropology of the Enlightenment (Stanford 2007), 146. 19 Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago: the land of the orang-utan and the bird of paradise … , 2 vols (London 1869); Adolf Bernhard Meyer, Der Malayische Archipel, die Heimath des Orang-Utan und des Paradiesvogels … (Braunschweig 1869). 20 Adolf Bernhard Meyer, Charles Darwin und Alfred Russel Wallace. Ihre ersten Publicationen über die „Entstehung der Arten“ … (Erlangen 1870); idem, Beiträge zur Theorie der natürlichen Zuchtwahl … (Erlangen 1870). 21 Anon., ‘Dr. A.B. Meyer's Reise nach dem Ost-Indischen Archipel’, Petermanns Mittheilungen, 16 (1870), 342–3. 22 Chris Ballard, ‘“Oceanic Negroes”: British anthropology of Papuans, 1820–1869’, in Douglas and Ballard, Foreign Bodies, 176. 23 Adolf Bernhard Meyer, ‘Neu-Guinea: Reiseskizze’, Das Ausland, 46:49 (1873), 961–5 and 46:50 (1873), 987–92. 24 Anon., ‘Dr. A.B. Meyer's Reise’, 342–3. 25 Adolf Bernhard Meyer, Auszüge aus den auf einer Neu Guinea-Reise im Jahre 1873 geführten Tagebüchern … (Dresden 1875), 1. 26 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection … , ed. J.W. Burrow (London 1968 [1859]), 374–96; Alfred Russel Wallace, ‘On the law which has regulated the introduction of new species’, Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 16, 2nd ser. (1855), 184–96; cf. ‘Ueber das Gesetz, welches das Entstehen neuer Arten regulirt hat’, in Meyer, Charles Darwin und Alfred Russel Wallace, 14–38. 27 In his 1995 Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology, Patrick V. Kirch described islands as ‘[l]ittle worlds unto themselves, circumscribed and frequently isolated … natural history's best shot at something approaching the controlled experiment’ and noted their centrality to disciplines ranging from evolutionary biology, ecology and biogeography to modern ethnography and stratigraphic archaeology. Kirch, ‘Microcosmic histories: island perspectives on “global” change’, American Anthropologist, 99:1 (1997), 30. 28 Bronwen Douglas, ‘Art as ethno-historical text: science, representation and indigenous presence in eighteenth and nineteenth century Oceanic voyage literature’, in Nicholas Thomas and Diane Losche (eds), Double Vision: art histories and colonial histories in the South Pacific (Cambridge 1999), 65–99; idem, ‘In the event: indigenous countersigns and the ethnohistory of voyaging’, in Margaret Jolly, Serge Tcherkézoff and Darrell Tryon (eds), Oceanic Encounters: exchange, desire, violence (Canberra 2009), 175–98. 29 Where ‘colonial’ refers broadly to ‘all kinds of texts, both verbal and visual, produced about indigenous people by Europeans and their affiliates from first contacts until decolonization’. Douglas, ‘Art as ethno-historical text’, 93, note 4. 30 Ibid., 68. 31 Meyer's travels appear to have been largely self-funded; Martin (‘Meyer’) notes that he came from ‘a well-to-do family’. Sales of natural historical collections supplemented his travel costs. For example, the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory agreed at their July 1872 meeting to purchase a selection of skeletons and skulls collected by Meyer in Celebes and the Philippines. See Rudolf Virchow, Item 3 (untitled), Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (hereafter VBGAEU), 4 (1872), 223. 32 Meyer, Auszüge, 2–3, 5. 33 Bernstein, about whom virtually nothing has been written, is a notable exception. 34 Ibid., 2; idem, ‘Dr. Meyer's travels in New Guinea’, Ocean Highways, 1 (1873), 387–9. 35 See Greg Dening, ‘Sharks that walk on the land: the death of Captain Cook’, Meanjin, 41 (1982), 427–37; Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers (Melbourne 2003), especially 110–32. 36 Meyer, Auszüge, 1. 37 Ibid., 2, 15. The German terms ‘indischer Archipel’ (Indian Archipelago) and ‘malayischer Archipel’ (Malay Archipelago), referring to what is now called the Malay Archipelago or maritime Southeast Asia, were used interchangeably at this time, as they were in English. See, for example, Richard Andree, Andrees allgemeine Handatlas, 3. Auflage (Bielefeld & Leipzig 1893); ‘Indian Archipelago, or Malay Archipelago’, in George Ripley and Charles A. Dana (eds), The American Cyclopaedia: a popular dictionary of general knowledge, 16 vols (New York 1873), v, available online at http://chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-5/Indian-Archipelago-Or-Malay-Archipelago.html (accessed 28 April 2010). 38 Meyer, Auszüge, 2–4. 39 The latter is given as ‘Rennooy’ in Meyer, Auszüge, 4. For a complete list of UZV missionaries in the Doreh area, see Kamma,“Dit wonderlijke Werk”, II, 811–14. 40 Meyer, Auszüge, 4. 41 Adolf Bernhard Meyer, ‘Über die Mafoor'sche und einige andere Papúa-Sprachen auf Neu-Guinea’, Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Classe der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien, 77 (1874), 525–32; idem, ‘Notizen über Glauben und Sitten der Papúas des Mafoor'schen Stammes auf Neu-Guinea’, Mittheilungen des Vereins für Erdkunde zu Dresden, 12 (1875), 23–39. 42 Meyer, ‘Über die Mafoor'sche’, 22, 55; idem, ‘Glauben und Sitten’, 23. 43 Meyer, Auszüge, 4. 44 Meyer, ‘Über die Mafoor'sche’, 3–4. 45 Meyer, Auszüge, 4. 46 Ibid., 5; see also idem, Bericht über eine Reise nach Neu-Guinea unternommen in den Jahren 1872 und 1873 … (Wien 1873), 14. 47 Meyer, ‘Neu-Guinea: Reiseskizze’, 964; idem, Auszüge, 5. 48 Meyer, Auszüge, 5; see also idem, ‘Über hundert fünf und dreissig Papúa-Schädel von Neu-Guinea und der Insel Mysore (Geelvinksbai)’, Mittheilungen des kgl. zoologischen Museums zu Dresden, 1 (1875), 59–83. 49 Meyer, ‘Über hundert fünf und dreissig Papúa-Schädel’, 64. 50 Adolf Bernhard Meyer, ‘Über den Fundort der von ihm überbrachten Skelete und Schädel von Negritos, sowie über die Verbreitung der Negritos auf den Philippinen’, VBGAEU, 5 (1873), 90–3; idem, ‘Die Negritos der Philippinen’, Petermanns Mittheilungen, 20 (1874), 19–22. Meyer variously specified the total number of skulls obtained in Kordo as 113 (Auszüge, 5) or 112 (‘Über hundert fünf und dreissig Papúa-Schädel’, 61). 51 Meyer, ‘Über hundert fünf und dreissig Papúa-Schädel’, 64. 52 Meyer, Bericht über eine Reise, 18–19. The name korwar or korvar, applied to ‘figurative representations of an ancestor’ from the Kepala Burung (formerly Vogelkop Peninsula) geographical and cultural area, is of uncertain origin. See Theodorus Petrus van Baaren, Korwars and Korwar Style: art and ancestor worship in North-West New Guinea (Paris and The Hague 1968), 21; Anthony J.P. Meyer, Oceanic Art (Köln 1995), 55–7. 53 Meyer, ‘Glauben und Sitten’, 28. 54 Ibid.; see also idem, Bericht über eine Reise, 19. 55 Meyer, ‘Glauben und Sitten’, 29; idem, Auszüge, 10. 56 Meyer, ‘Über hundert fünf und dreissig Papúa-Schädel’, 64–5; idem, Auszüge, 8. 57 Meyer, ‘Über hundert fünf und dreissig Papúa-Schädel’, 65; idem, Auszüge, 8. 58 Meyer, ‘Glauben und Sitten’, 27. Although no precise location is specified in this quote, Rubi, located near an open-air burial ground and the only place apart from Kordo where Meyer obtained human remains, seems the most likely candidate. 59 Meyer, Auszüge, 7–8. 60 Ibid., 7–9. 61 Ibid., 7. 62 The Latin version of Le Maire's journal recorded the presence of ‘women’, some of them ‘pregnant’, in the canoes that approached the Eendracht off the northeast coast of New Guinea on 9 July 1616 as ‘a most certain token of peace’. Jacob Le Maire, ‘Ephemerides sive descriptio navigationis Australis … ’, in Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Novvs orbis sive descriptio Indiae occidentalis … (Amstelodami 1622), Folio 69v. I am grateful to Chris Ballard for this observation. 63 Meyer, Auszüge, 9. 64 Meyer, ‘Glauben und Sitten’, 27. 65 Meyer, ‘Über die Mafoor'sche’, 3–4, 8. 66 George W. Stocking, Jr, ‘The persistence of polygenist thought in post-Darwinian anthropology’, in idem, Race, Culture, and Evolution: essays in the history of anthropology (Chicago and London 1982), 42–68. 67 Theodor Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, 6 vols (Leipzig 1859–72), I, 316; cf. Meyer, Auszüge, title page. 68 Adolf Bernhard Meyer, ‘Anthropologische Mittheilungen über die Papua's von Neu-Guinea. I. Aeusserer physischer Habitus’, Mittheilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft zu Wien, 4 (1874), 87–110. 69 Rudolf Virchow, ‘Ueber Schädel von Neu-Guinea’, VBGAEU, 5 (1873), 65–73. 70 See, for example, Douglas, ‘Novus Orbis Australis’, 116–24. 71 Virchow, ‘Ueber Schädel von Neu-Guinea’, 65. 72 Ibid., 66. 73 Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, II, 176, 439–48. For a detailed discussion of Wallace's conception of racial difference in the Malay Archipelago, see Ballard, ‘Oceanic Negroes’, 174–87. 74 Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, II, 445–6. 75 Virchow, ‘Ueber Schädel von Neu-Guinea’, 68–9. 76 Rudolf Virchow, ‘Papua-Schädel von Darnley Island und anderen melanesischen Inseln’, VBGAEU, 5 (1873), 175–7. 77 A.B. Meyer, ‘Ueber die Papua's und Neu-Guinea’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 5 (1873), 306–9. 78 Meyer, ‘Anthropologische Mittheilungen’, n.p.; cf. Meyer, Auszüge, n.p. 79 Meyer, ‘Anthropologische Mittheilungen’, 107–8. 80 Ibid., 93–4. 81 Ibid., 94. 82 Ibid., 90. 83 Ibid., 110. 84 Ibid., 106. 85 Ibid., 87–8. 86 Mary Louise Pratt, ‘Scratches on the face of the country; or, what Mr Barrow saw in the land of the Bushmen’, Critical Inquiry, 12:1 (1985), 120. 87 Meyer, ‘Über die Mafoor'sche’, 9, note 1; cf. idem, ‘Anthropologische Mittheilungen’, 91. 88 Alfred Russel Wallace, quoted in Ballard, ‘Oceanic Negroes’, 179. 89 Ballard, ‘Oceanic Negroes’, 186. 90 Meyer, ‘Anthropologische Mittheilungen’, 89. 91 Ibid., 89–90. 92 Meyer, ‘Die Negritos der Philippinen’, 20. 93 Wichmann, Entdeckungsgeschichte, II, 151–4. 94 A.B. Meyer, ‘Über die Beziehungen zwischen Negritos und Papuas’, VBGAEU, 7 (1875), 47–8. 95 Ibid., 47. Abändern, ‘to change’ can also be translated as ‘to vary’, ‘to modify’ or ‘to mutate’. 96 A.B. Meyer, ‘Die Minahassa auf Celebes’, in Rudolf Virchow and Franz von Holtzendorff (eds), Sammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, 11th series, no. 262 (Berlin 1876), 915–45. 97 Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, I, 251, 260, 266–7. 98 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Handbuch der Naturgeschichte (Göttingen 1779), 56–7; cf. Timothy Lenoir, ‘Kant, Blumenbach, and vital materialism in German biology’, Isis, 71:256 (1980), 77–108. 99 On Quatrefages and Hamy and their ambivalent relationships to Broca's physical anthropology, see Stephanie Anderson, ‘“Three living Australians” and the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1885’, in Douglas and Ballard, Foreign Bodies, 229–55, especially 243–4; Bronwen Douglas, ‘Climate to crania: science and the racialization of human difference’, in Douglas and Ballard, Foreign Bodies, 33–96, especially 56–7 and 66ff. 100 A. de Quatrefages, ‘Étude sur les Mincopies et la race Négrito en générale’, Revue d’Anthropologie, 1 (1872), 193–249; Meyer, ‘Anthropologische Mittheilungen’, 91. 101 [Julien] Girard de Rialle, ‘Revue des journaux’, Revue d’Anthropologie, 3 (1874), 728–34. 102 A. de Quatrefages and Ernest T. Hamy, Crania ethnica: les crânes des races humaines, 2 vols (Paris 1882), I, v, vii, 205, 518–19. 103 A.B. Meyer, Die Philippinen. II. Negritos (Dresden 1893). An English translation of pages 67–87 was published as The Distribution of the Negritos in the Philippine Islands and Elsewhere (Dresden 1899). 104 Meyer, ‘Ueber hundert fünf und dreissig Papúa-Schädel’, 66; idem, ‘Ueber die Papua's und Neu-Guinea’, 307–8; idem, Die Philippinen … Negritos, 87. 105 For a detailed analysis of anthropology's national trajectories between 1750 and 1880, particularly in Britain and France, see Douglas, ‘Climate to crania’, 33–96.