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'Wild and barbaric manners': The exotic encountered in a Dutch account ofAustralian Aborigines in 1705

Eric Venbrux

The unknown Southland - terra Australis incognita - was a truly antipodean world in the European imagination. Ships of the Dutch East India Com• pany reached the Southland early in the seventeenth century: there were accidental landfalls to the western coast, but the Company also sent exploratory expeditions to the north of the region, which they called , in search ofvaluable, exotic merchandise. Dutch seventeenth- and eighteenth-century images ofthe inhabitants and distinctive flora and fauna ofNew Holland have hitherto received relatively little attention in the liter• ature, in contrast to the areas explored by the British. Later British perspec• tives, however, had their antecedents in these earlier observations by the crews ofDutch ships. In this article lexamine Dutch perceptions ofthe exotic in the earliest description ofa single group ofAustralian Aborigines. This was based upon a stay with the people presently known as the Tiwi on the present-day Bathurst and Melville Islands. In 1636 Pieter Pieterszoon had christened these territories Van Diemenslant, after Anthony van Diemen, the governor general ofthe . Pieterzoon left the islands unex• plored, but in 1705 another expedition, led by Maarten van Delft, returned and spent three months there. The resulting account paints an exotic image ofthe Aborigines with whom the Dutch crewmembers interacted for weeks on end. The Dutch imperative to develop profitable trade and suitable trad• ing partners led to some telling misunderstandings. Moreover, the historical concept of 'gradations of civility' - to which historian Ernst van den Boogaart has drawn attention - had an impact on the way in which the indigenous people were seen. I I suggest that Maarten van Delft's account of the Aboriginal character and way oflife, and more specifically the valuation ofwhat they did and did not possess, indelibly stamped subsequent images ofthese peoples in northwestern Europe. In his epoch-making book European Vision and the South Pacific (1960, 2nd ed. 1985) the art historian Bernard Smith demonstrates the com• plex impact ofthe emerging European experience ofthe Pacific upon Euro• pean art (especially landscape-painting) and ideas. Furthermore, he shows how popular preconceptions in European thought as to the nobility or igno• bility of'savage ' peoples influenced the way in which the latter were under• stood by European observers at the time. Thus for the buccaneer William Dampier the inhabitants of New Holland were 'the miserablest People in Eric Venbrux

the world', whereas Captain noted that 'in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans' because they led a much simpier life. 2 This ambiguity in the perception of the inhabitants of New Holland entered European social thought.3 Until far into the twentieth century the case ofthe Australian Aborig• ines served as the outstanding example ofso-called 'primitive society'.4 They were considered the antipodeans of 'civilised' Europeans, not only in space but also in time and in development or .5 Discourse about the '' often says more about the commentators themselves than about the people concerned.6 Whether the 'Other' is conceived ofas a 'nobie' or 'igno• bIe savage' is very much in the eye ofthe beholder, imagined, so to speak, as a mirror-image ofthe measure ofhappiness with one's own society. Thus the two modalities, both of romantic idealisation and perceived uncivilised behaviour, may be projected onto one and the same people. As Burridge points out, however, the Polynesians became 'the very epitome of the noble savage', whereas 'the Aborigines struck few romantic cords'J Smith makes a distinction between 'soft' and 'hard' in the approach to Pacific peoples. Hard primitivism applied to the original population ofNew Holland.8 The era ofthe Dutch discoveries, according to the anthropologist WE.H. Stanner, marked a shift in the way so-called 'primitives' were seen. Initially, they had been regarded as 'objects ofwon• der' but by the time Dutch navigators reported on the inhabitants of the Southland they had become increasingly targets ofdenigration and disdain. 9 In the year 1606, when the Dutch of began, the De Bry brothers completed the publication of the Historia Indil2 Orientalis series. The seven volumes, including their edition ofVan Linschoten's Itin• erario, presented the state ofEuropean knowledge ofAsia and sub-Saharan Mrica. An important theme in these works, as Van den Boogaart shows, was the 'degree ofcivility' ofthe various societies. Both between and within soci• eties, he notes, '[m]any gradations could be found between the extremes of

full civility and absolute barbarism'. IQ There was thus already in existence a mental framework from which Dutch explorers could approach newly encountered, . Following the contemporary notion of civility, the nature oftheir societies could also be evaluated in a comparative perspective. A close reading of the 1705 account, the first somewhat more detailed description of an Australian Aboriginal society, reveals how the observations were guided by these preconceived ideas. It mayalso contribute to a better understanding of the genealogy of exotic imagery concerning this people. The frequent assertion that secrecy was maintained about the Dutch discovery ofthe Southland must be taken with a grain ofsalt. Special agents offered information for sale, ifit was not already a public secret, narratives of voyages to the Southland appeared in print and translation, and charts were circulated, copied and printed with the latest geographical information, which also appeared on globes and so forth. II Artefacts and naturalia collected from newly discovered lands stood a good chance ofending up in the cabinets of curiosities owned and opened to reputable visitors by merchants and citizens in Dutch towns. I2 Dampier's unfavourable opinion of the Aborigines not only echoes that of the Dutch explorer Jan Carstensz. van Embden, who in 1623 found that they were 'bar-