Slippery word, ambiguous praxis: 'Race' and late-18th-century voyagers in Oceania

Journal of Pacific History

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-29

  Douglas, Bronwen ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34548204093     PISSN: 00223344     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00223340600652268     Document Type: Review

References (126)

1. I use the regional term Oceania in its inclusive early 19th-century sense, which encompassed the East Indies (modern Indonesia and the Philippines), New Guinea (modern Papua New Guinea and the Indonesian province of Papua), New Holland (mainland Australia), Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), New Zealand (Aotearoa) and the Pacific Islands within a single geographical zone constituting the 'fifth part of the world'. Edme Mentelle and Conrad Malte-Brun, Géographie mathématique, physique et politique de toutes les parties du monde, .., 16 vols (Paris 1803-05), XII, 357-63. I use inverted commas on first mention of an English word in its contemporary sense and omit them subsequently, except for direct quotations. However, they are implied in the ease of the now problematic terms 'race', 'civilisation', 'savage', 'people', 'Negro' and 'Indian'. Xon-English words are italicised
2. By 'countersigns'. I mean inadvertent textual traces of the imprint of local actions and demeanour on the perceptions, reactions and representations of visiting outsiders. See also Bronwen Douglas. 'Seaborne ethnography and the natural history of man', Journal of Pacific History, 38 (2003), 3-27
3. Le dictionnaire de l' Académie françoise, dedié au roy, 2 vols (Paris 1694), II, 384
4. Jean Nirot, Thresor de la langue francoyse, tant ancienne que moderne (Paris 1606), 533-4
5. Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edn, Oxford 1989), online < http://dictionary,oed.com >, accessed 8 Sept. 2005 (henceforth OED)
6. Raymond Williams, Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society (revised edn. New York 1983 [1976]), 248
7. Fo biologisation of the French term race during the second half of the 18th century, see Bronwen Douglas. 'Notes on "race" and the biologisation of human difference', Journal of Pacific History, 40 (2005), 331-8
8. [Georges-Louis Leclerc. comte de Buffon], 'De la dégé nération des animaux', in Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, 15 vols (Paris 1749-67), XIV (1768). 311, 313
9. Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon. Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière: supplément, IV, Servant de suite à l'histoire naturelle de l'homme (Paris 1711), 462, 478-80. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own
10. Immanuel Kant, Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen zur Ankundigung der Vorlesungen der physischen Geographie im Sommerhalbenjahre 1775 (Königsberg 1775)
11. idem, 'Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace', Berlinische Monatsschrift, 6 (1785), 390-417
12. See also Thomas Strack, 'Philosophical anthropology on the eve of biological determinism: Immanuel Kant and Georg Forster on the moral qualities and biological characteristics of the human race', Central European History, 29 (1996). 291-9
13. Johann Friedrich Blumenhach, Über die natürlichen Verschiedenheiten im Menschengeschlechter, tr. Johann Gottfried Gruber (Leipzig 1798 [1795]), 208-24
14. Timothy Lenoir, 'Kant, Blumenbach, and vital materialism in German biology', ISIS, 71 (1980), 87-96
15. E.g., Georges Cuvier, 'Note instructive sur les recherches à faire relativement aux différences anatomiques des diverses races d'hommes', in Jean Copans and Jean Jamin (eds), Aux origines de l'anthropologie française: les mèmoires de la Société des observateurs de l'homme en l'an VIII (Paris 1978 [1857]), 173-4
16. Joseph-Julien Virey, Histoire naturelle du genre humain, ou recherches sur ses pri
17. In 1819, William Lawrence scandalised Evangelical opinion by publishing a course of lectures which aimed 'to consider man as an object of zoology' and 'account for the principal differences between the various races of mankind'. Lectures on Physiology, Zuology, and the Natural History of Man, Delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons (London 1819), 119
18. Withdrawn from publication, the book was widely circulated in pirated editions and was hugelv influential. James Cowles Prichard, the doyen of British ethnologists, had used race rarely in 1813 and always in the loose 18th-century sense but, by 1826, race was his preferred term lor major subgroups of the human species. Researches into the Physical History of Man (London 1813)
19. idem, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, 2 vols (2nd edn, London 1826)
20. Ambroise Tardieu, 'Carte pour l'intelligence du mémoire de M. le capitaine d'Urville sur les îles du grand océan (Océanie)', in Jules-Sébasticn-Gésar Dumont d'Urville, 'Sur les îles du Grand Océan', Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, 17 (1832), frontispiece
21. [Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon], 'Variétés dans l'espèce humaine', in Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, 15 vols (Paris 1749-67), III (1749), 529-30
22. Bronwen Douglas, 'The lure of texts and the discipline of praxis: erosscultural history in a post-empirical world', Humanities Research (forthcoming)
23. George Forster, A Voyage Round the World in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop, Resolution ..., 2 vols (London 1777)
24. Johann Reinhold Forster, Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World, ed. Nicholas Thomas, Harriet Guest and Michael Dettelhach (Honolulu 1996 [1778])
25. John Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the So (London 1773)
26. Forster, Observations, 143-4, 153, my emphasis
27. Forster, A Voyage, II, 226-8, 231, my emphasis
28. Forster, Observations, 158, 184-5, 225-9, my emphasis
29. Forster's conjectural history of the peopling of Oceania by migration and racial displacement was prefigured in outline by the French littérateur Charles de Brosses, president of the Burgundian parlement. Brosses deduced a tripartite geography of 'the unknown austral world' but it is anachronistic to recast it as anticipating a dual racial classification of the region. [Charles de Brosses], Histoire des navigations aux terres australes..,. 2 vols (Paris 1856). I, 77-80
30. II, 376 80
31. See Bronwen Douglas, 'Science and the art of representing "savages" reading "rare" in text and image in South Seas voyage literature'. History and Anthropology, 11 (1999), 167-72
32. Georg Forster, 'Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen', Teutsche Merkur, Nov. 1786, 64 6. I thank Christa Knellwolf for help in translating this paper
33. Forster, 'Noch etwas'. 76-7, 157, 163-5
34. J.C. Beaglehole, The Exploration of
35. James Burney, A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Seas or Pacific Ocean, 5 vols ('London 1803-17), IV, 388
36. O.H.K. Spate, The Pacific Since Magellan, 3 vols (Canberra and Rushcutters Bay, NSW 1979-88), I, Monopolists and Freebooters (Canberra 1983), 157
37. William Dampier, A Voyage to New-Holland, &c. in the Year 1699 [1703], in John Masefield (ed.), Dampier's Voyages, 2 vols (London 1906). II, 440
38. Idem, A New Voyage Round the World (6th edn., 1717 [1697]), in Maselield (ed.), Dampier's Voyages, I, 308, 333-4, 444-6, 453-7
39. idem, A Voyage to New-Holland, 438 40
40. idem, A Continuation of a Voyage to New-Holland, &c. in the Year 1699 [1709], in Maselield (ed.), Dampier's Voyages, II, 528-30, 544
41. Idem, A New Voyage. 453, 517
42. The ambiguous entanglement of somatic, religious, linguistic and social criteria in Darnpier's 'ethnographic' terminology is most obvious with respect to Timor where, in 1699. he encountered 'a lawless People', 'ambitious to be called Portugueze', though most of them 'are Indians; and there are very lew right Portuguese in any part of the Island'. 'The Portugueze', he added, were 'already so mixt, that it is hard to distinguish whether they are Porlugueze or Indians. Their Language is Portugueze; and the Religion they have, is Romish.... They speak indifferently the Malayan and their own native Languages, as well as Portugueze', Idem, A Continuation, 494-5, 501-2
43. Diana and Michael Preston, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: the life of William Dampier (New York 2004), 172
44. Dampier, A New Voyage, 453
45. Preston and Preston, A Pirate, 271
46. Dampier, A Voyage to New-Holland, 440
47. Joseph Banks, The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768-1771 ed. J.C. Beaglehole, 2 vols (Sydney 1962), II, 50, 55, 92, 111-12, 124
48. James Cook, The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery, ed. J.C. Beaglehole, 4 vols (Cambridge 1955 74), I
49. The Voyage of the Endeavour 1768-1771 (Cambridge 1955), 312, 358, 395
50. Hawkesworth, An Account, III, 227
51. William Dampier, 'Voyages Through the South Seas, 1681-1691', MS copy annotated by the author, Sloanc 3236, British Library (London n.d.)
52. idem, A New Voyage, 453-7
53. Idem, A Continuation, 458
54. Helen Wallis, 'Editorial', in idem fed.), Carteret's Voyage Round the World 1766 1769, 2 vols (Cambridge 1965). I, 60-3
55. Philip Carteret, 'A voyage round the Globe in the years 1766. 67, 68, &. 69', in Wallis (ed.), Carteret's Voyage, I, 172, editor's fn. 3; 201, editor's fn. 3
56. Carteret, 'A Voyage', 159-74, 172
57. Hawkesworth, An Account, I, 348 63
58. William A. Lessa, 'The Mapia Islands and their affinities', in Niel Gunson (ed.), The Changing Pacific: essays in honour of H.E. Maude (Melbourne 1978), 228-46
59. Carteret, 'A Voyage', 201, editor's fn. 3
60. Robertson, The Discovery, 135-229
61. see also W.H. Pearson. 'European intimidation and the myth of Tahiti', Journal of Pacific History. 4 (1969), 199-217
62. The most egregious of Wallis's racial presumptions is her comment that 'Many Melanesian peoples in more easterly regions such as the New Hebrides [Vanuatu] practise the Polynesian custom of kava drinking'. Carteret, 'A Voyage', 196, editor's fn. 4. Kava, piper methysticum, was probably first domesticated in Vanuatu, where a much greater range of varieties of the plant grows than elsewhere in the region. David Luders, 'Legend and history: did the Vanuatu-Tonga kava trade cease in A.D. 1447?', Journal of the Polynesian Society, 105 (1996), 287 9
63. Idem, 'Journal de Bougainville commandant de la Boudeuse', in Etienne Taillemite (ed.), Bougainville et ses compagnons autour du monde 1766-1769, 2 vols (Paris 1977), I, 367
64. Idem, 'The journal', in John Dunmore (tr. and ed,), The Pacific Journal of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville 1767-1768 (London 2002), 115, editor's In. 2. Dunmore's retrospective projection of later racial taxonomies is even more explicit in another fool note: 'The French have passed from Polynesia to Melanesia; the physical and cultural differences between the two groups have now become apparent'
65. Charles-Nicolas-Orthon d'Orange et de Nassau-Siegen. 'The Journal of Nassau-Siegen', in Dunmore (tr. and ed.), The Pacific Journal, 289, editor's fn. 1
66. Bougainville, 'Journal', 367
67. idem, Voyage, 269
68. Etienne Taillemite, 'Introduction', in idem (ed.), Bougainville, 45-57
69. Bougainville, Voyage, 269
70. Idem, 'Journal', 344 6
71. The term cotonné clearly insinuated resemblance to Negroes: it applied only to hair and meant 'very short and very frizzy, like that of the Negroes'. Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, 2 vols (5th edn, Paris 1798), I, 323
72. J Taillemite (ed.), Bougainville, II. 325
73. Gharles-Félix-Pierre Fesche, 'Journal de Charles-Félix- Pierre Fesche volontaire sur la Boudeuse', in Taillemite (ed.), Bougainville, II, 82 3
74. Charles-Nicolas-Orthon d'Orange et de Nassau-Siegen, 'Journal de Charles-Orlhon de Nassau-Siegen passager sur la Boudeuse', in Taillemite (ed.), Bougainville, II, 394-5, 402
75. Banks, The Endeavour Journal, I, 257, 400
76. II, 91
77. Matthew Flinders, 'Journal of Proceedings on Board the Investigator, 25 Jan, 1801-10 Jun. 1803', 2 vols, MS, Public Library of NSW, Sydney, online < http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/flinders/manuscripts/3.html>, accessed 17 Sept. 2005
78. idem, A Voyage to Terra Australis,.. in the Tears 1801, 1802, and 1803 in His Majesty's Ship the Investigator..., 2 vols (London 1814)
79. Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Men, 474
80. E.g., Bougainville, 'Journal', 316, 335, 344-7, 364, 367, 369, 381
81. idem, Voyage, 214
82. idem, Voyage, 214, 237-9, my emphasis
83. Philibert Commerson and Pierre Duclos-Guyot, 'Journaux de Philibert Commerson médecin botaniste embarqué sur l'Etoile et de Pierre Duclos-Guyot volontaire sur la Boudeuse, puis sur l'Etoile', in Taillemite (ed.), Bougainville, II, 477
84. II, 112, my emphasis
85. II, 124
86. Cook, The Journals, II
87. The Voyage of the Resolution and Adventure 1772-1775 (Cambridge 1961), 462, 466, my emphasis
88. Forster, A Voyage, II, 207
89. Forster's objection to the comparison was philosophical rather than ethnographic: he wanted to provide no 'shadow of an argument in favour of the orang-outang system' of 'superficial philosophers' who classified certain great apes within the human species. That Cook himself later regretted the monkey tag on similar grounds is implied in his reported protest in 1776: '"I did not say they were like monkeys. I said their faces put me in mind of monkeys"'. Charles Ryskamp and Frederick A. Pottle (eds), Boswell: the ominous years 1774-1776 (Melbourne 1963), 308
90. The same disingenuous scruple might have inspired Cook to alter the 'Apish Nation' of his journal to 'this ape-like nation' in his published voyage narrative, James Cook, A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Performed in His Majesty's Ships the Resolution and Adventure in the Tears 1772, 1773, 1774, and 1775. . ., 2 vols (London 1777), II, 34
91. Cook, The Journals, II, 480, 513-15, my emphasis
92. William Wales, 'Journal', in Cook, The Journals, II, 849
93. See Margaret Jolly, '"Ill-natured comparisons": racism and relativism m European representations of Ni-Vanuatu from Cook's second voyage', History and Anthropology, 5 (1992), 346 57
94. Johann Rcinhold Forster, The Resolution Journal of Johann Reinhold Forster 1772 1775, ed. Michael E. Hoare, 4 vols (London 1982)
95. Dumont d'Urville, 'Sur les îles', 3
96. Flinders, 'Journal of Proceedings'. II, 381
97. idem, A Vovage, II, 212, my emphasis
98. Idem, A Voyage, II, 212-14
99. Flinders's speculations on the genealogical implications of the similarity or otherwise of languages paraphrase a passage by William Anderson in the narrative of Cook's third voyage of 1776-80. James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean.... for Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere... in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, and 1780, 3 vols (London 1784), I, 114-15
100. Hinders, A Voyage, I, xciv
101. II, 212
102. See above; Cook, The Journals, I, 358
103. Cook and King, A Voyage, I, 99-100
104. Cook's several editors differed sharply on the veracity of Dampiers published impressions of the people he saw in northwest New Holland, albeit with a recursive anti-Negro subtext. Hawkesworth said he was 'mistaken' (see above), whereas Canon John Douglas, editor of the official narratives of the second and third voyages, saw 'no reason' to suppose this and took issue instead with Cook, proclaiming 'a striking resemblance1 between 'Dampier's New Hollanders' and the people described by Cook along the east coast and in Van Diernen's Land, and of both to 'the Negroes of Guinea', Cook and King, A Voyage, I, 99, 100, 102. editor's fns
105. Conversely, in the 1950s and 60s, J.C. Beaglehole devoted at least seven footnotes to refuting Dampier in his editions of Banks's and Cook's journals, insisting: 'There is nothing of the negro in the Australian aborigine'. Banks, The Endeavour Journal, II, 55, editor's fn. 3
106. Anderson in Cook and King, A Voyage, I, 114 17
107. In a footnote to his edition of Anderson's manuscript journal, Beaglehole flatly rebutted the hypothesis of 'one common source' for Tasmanian and mainland Aborigines: 'This was not so. The Tasmanians were Melanesian negriloid, die Australians Dravidian.' His terminology, like Wallis's, reveals the longevity of normalised racial categories, even in antiracialist scholarly discourse. William Anderson, 'A journal of a voyage made in His Majcstys Sloop Resolution', in Cook, The Journals, III, The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery I776-1780 (Cambridge 1967), 788, editor's fn, 1
108. Douglas, 'The lure of texts'
109. Jules-Secorvette l' Astrolabe exécuté.. .pendant les années 1826 1827 1828 1829... Histoire du voyage, 5 vols (Paris 1830-33), II, 387-573
110. Flinders in David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, from its First Settlement, in January 1788, to August 1801..., 2 vols (London 1802), II: 253-4
111. François Péron and Louis-Claude de Saulses de Frevcinel, Voyage de découvertes aux terres australes . .. pendant les années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804. Historique, 2 vols (Paris 1807-16), I, 144
112. II, 164, 164n, 182, my emphasis
113. See also George W. Stocking, Jr, Race, Culture, and Evolution: essays in the history of anthropology (New York 1968), 34
114. E.g., Buffon argued that a comparison of 'two different peoples [living] in the same climate' would show 'the men of the savage nation' to he 'more swarthy, uglier, smaller, more wrinkled than those of the civilised nation'. [Buiffn], 'Variétés, 447
115. [Buffon], 'De la dégénération', 313-16
116. Antoine-Raymond-Joseph de Bruni d'Entrecasteaux, Voyage de Dentrecasteaux envoyé à la recherche de La Pérouse..., ed. Elisabeth-Paul-Edouard de Rossel, 2 vols (Paris 1808), I, 313
117. Bronwen Douglas, 'In the event: indigenous countersigns and the ethnohistory of voyaging', in Margaret Jolly, Serge Tcherkézoff, and Darrell Tryon (eds), Oceanic Encounters (forthcoming)
118. Niel Gunson, Messengers of Grace; evangelical missionaries in the South Seas 1797 1860 (Melbourne 1978). III
119. [Samuel Grcathced], 'Preliminary discourse: containing a geographical and historical account of the islands where missionaries have settled, and of others with which they are connected', in [James Wilson], A Missionary Voyage to ike Southern Pacific Ocean, Performed in the Years 1796, 1797, 1798, in the Ship Duff .. (London 1799), lxxxv lxxxviii, my emphasis
120. [Thomas Haweis], 'Appendix', in [Wilson], A Missionary Voyage, 407, my emphasis
121. [Greathced], 'Preliminary discourse', lxxxviii
122. John Pinkerton, Modern Geography: a description of the empires, kingdoms, states, and colonies; with the oceans, seas, and isles; in all parts of the world..., 2 vols (London 1802), II. 487, 494
123. Mentelle and Malte-Brun, Géographie XII, 359-63, 474, orig. emphasis
124. See fn. 19
125. See Douglas, 'Seaborne ethnography', 23-7
126. Pérou and Freycinet, Voyage, I, 230 9, 285, 287, 446, my emphasis