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A Long and Unfortunate Voyage towards the 'Invention' of the / Distinction 1595-1832 Author(s): Serge Tcherkézoff Source: The Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 38, No. 2, Dumont d'Urville's Divisions of : Fundamental Precincts or Arbitrary Constructs? (Sep., 2003), pp. 175-196 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25169638 Accessed: 03-05-2017 00:12 UTC

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A Long and Unfortunate Voyage Towards the Invention" of the Melanesia /Polynesia Distinction 1595-1832*

SERGE TCHERK?ZOFF

Dumont d'Urville's Invention' in 1832

Jules-S?bastien-C?sar Dumont d'Urville has gone down in French history for his role in acquiring the Venus de Milo for in 1819-20, his two voyages of discovery in the Pacific (1826-29 and 1837-40), the numerous publications resulting from the voyages (volumes published between 1831 and 1835 and 1840 and 1860), and for his pre-eminent rank as Rear Admiral achieved towards the end of his life. Dumont d'Urville's death, too, made national headlines, because he died in one of the 's first major railway accidents and was given a state burial. His best known work during his life ? but the least well known to historians today ? was a picturesque compilation of voyages around the world published in 1834. The book was written for the general public and was a resounding success. In the introduction, Dumont d'Urville recalled that he had presented a map and a fourfold nomenclature for Oceania to a learned society in December 1831 ^January 1832: 'In the paper I read to the Soci?t? de G?ographie, ... I suggested dividing Oceania ... [into] Polynesia, , and Melanesia.'1 Since those years, and social scientists have used Dumont d'Urville's terminology when referring to the Pacific. The divisions Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia became 'scientific knowledge' invented by a famous French navigator, and, as early as 1840, they became common knowledge which went into French school textbooks. Common knowledge is supposedly innocuous. Yet it is far from this. For one thing, it was not a simple matter of geography and map-making, but of race. There is also historical error, bordering on imposture, because Dumont d'Urville in 1834 laid claim to an invention that was not really his. In his paper published in 1832, he was more honest and credited his sources more or less clearly. Last, but significantly, there is a tendency to forget that what is known as 'Dumont d'Urville's terminology' simply added a few proper nouns to a theory ? in

* Translated from French by Isabel Ollivier. Jules-S?bastien-C?sar Dumont d'Urville, Voyage pittoresque autour du monde: r?sum? g?n?ral des voyages de d?couvertes de Magellan, Tasman, Dampier ..., publi? sous la direction de M. Dumont d'Urville (Paris 1834-35), vi. This compilation is distinct from Dumont d'Urville's formai reports on his voyages. The inclusion of'Malaysia' may seem surprising, but, in those years, the French geographical notion of'Oc?anie' (which emerged in the years 1810-20) included parts of Southeast .

ISSN 0022-3344 print; 1469-9605 online/03/020175-22; Carfax Publishing; Taylor and Francis Ltd ? 2003 The Journal of Pacific History Inc. DOI: 10.1080/0022334032000120521

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existence two and a half centuries before 1832 ? which held that the Pacific was inhabited by 'two races'.

Racist Invention

It must be firmly emphasised that the fourfold division of Oceania was not harmless and had litde to do with geography. A close reading of Dumont d'Urville's 1832 paper clearly shows the intention to contribute to racial theories of human variation,2 and not simply to add to the cartographic collection of the French Navy. Dumont d'Urville made no secret of this and repeated his desire in the introduction to his 1834 best seller:

In the paper that I read to the Soci?t? de G?ographie ... I suggested dividing all of Oceania [into] Polynesia, Micronesia, Malaysia and Melanesia ... All trav ellers ... [recognised] two separate races [in Oceania] ... two varieties of the human spirit that are very different one from the other, and on the basis of the many essential traits that characterise each of these two varieties, they separated them at once into two distinct races.3

The two 'races' were distinguished from one another by several 'traits'. The first 'race' had average height, yellowish 'coppery' complexion, straight hair, regular body form and well-proportioned limbs. This race often formed nations, sometimes with .4 The second 'race' had a very dark-brown complexion, described as sooty, and almost as black as that of the Kaffirs. Hair was curly and frizzy, with ugly facial features, and an unpleasant body form with frail and disproportionate limbs. The second race lived 'in small tribes, almost never [forming] a na tion ... their condition is always close to barbarity'.5 Dumont d'Urville then links the quaternary regional division (Malaysia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia) with the binary racial division. The first 'race' contained the 'copper-skinned people' present in Polynesia, Micronesia and Malaysia. The second race included all the 'black-skinned' people, comprising 'all the Oceanic peoples who have more or less black skin, curly and frizzy hair, and often frail, deformed limbs. We shall give [them] the name of Melanesia.'6 The of Melanesia included , New , New Britain, New Ireland, , , Santa Cruz and . In these landmasses, the

2 This fundamental point has already been made by the historian Bronwen Douglas, who draws attention to the fact that Dumont d'Urville's cartographic invention came at a time when, in France and in England, the idea of'race' in the modern sense (essentialism and gradation of types) was being invented, and was far from the simple idea of 'variety' that prevailed in the 18th century. See Bronwen Douglas, 'Art as ethno-historical text: science, representation and indigenous presence in eighteenth and nineteenth century Oceanic voyage literature', in N. Thomas and D. L?sche (eds), Double Vision: art histories and colonial histories in the Pacific (Cambridge 1999), 65-99; idem, 'Science and the art of representing "savages": reading "race" in text and image in South voyage literature', History and Anthropology, 11: 2-3 (1999), 157-201; idem, 'Seaborne ethnography and the natural history of man', Journal of Pacific History, 38 (2003); idem, 'Inventing "race": the "science of man" and the Pacific connection', in B. Douglas and C. Ballard (eds), Foreign Bodies: Oceania and racial science 1750-1940, forthcoming. Dumont d'Urville, Voyage pittoresque, vi. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., vii. 6 Ibid.

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people lived in 'a sort of barbarity. No government, laws or formal ceremonies; a constant, strong aversion to Europeans. The most philanthropic observer is forced to admit that there is a huge difference between the intelligence of these people and that of the merely or coppery peoples.'7 Dumont d'Urville's 'merely yellow' reveals that his invention is not only a quaternary regional distinction but also a binary racial distinction. Moreover, in modern terms, it is a racist division because it is stratified on a decreasing scale of skin colour. Having 'merely yellow' skin is not as bad as having 'more or less black' skin.8 The racial background is not surprising. Although Dumont d'Urville was a seafaring man and had developed a genuine interest in cartography, his favourite intellectual circle was that of the physiologists and botanists who honoured Georges Cuvier and sought to understand the human race through Cuvier's tripartite model of white, yellow and black races. Dumont d'Urville paid explicit homage to Cuvier's model in a note at the end of his 1832 paper, even if his purpose was to highlight the independence of his 'invention' from Cuvier's work, and to show that it derived solely from his observations made in the course of voyages to the Great . It is significant that the first volume that Dumont d'Urville published when he returned from an expedition to the Pacific (Duperrey's voyage) was on botany. He co-authored it with two botanists, Jean-Baptiste-Genevi?ve-Marcellin Bory de Saint-Vincent, and Adolphe Brongniart.9 Bory de Saint-Vincent was in many ways a 'scientist' of his time and had an approach in terms of 'zoology' which disestablished the separation of men and animals, championed by the French humanist and naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, and others, by placing animal 'races' and human 'races' on the same continuum. Thus, Bory de Saint-Vincent was able to assert that the Hottentots of South were an intermediate genus between the genera '' and 'gibbon'. In other words half-man and half-monkey. Bory de Saint-Vincent and Julien-Joseph Virey held that this 'race' was the 'link between the genus Man and the genera Orang and Gibbon'. They also shared the idea that the language of the Hottentots and 'Boshimans' was 'reduced to a sort of clucking ... like that of turkey cocks'.10 Among Dumont d'Urville's associates were the two doctors, Jean-Ren? Quoy and Joseph Gaimard, who wrote up the zoological results from the 1826-29 voyage of the Astrolabe in a multi-volume study. They had already carried out Cuvier's instructions on an initial voyage in the Pacific under Freycinet (1817?20), collecting and concealing the skulls of'Papuans'. Cuvier, at the turn of the 19th century, had launched the idea that the volume and shape of the skull provided direct indications of the intelligence of a 'race' and its capacity to evolve towards civilisation. By

7 Ibid. 8 This 1834 text is fundamental because the author, in addressing the general public, condenses and clearly explains the idea he was working on when he presented his paper to a learned audience in January 1832. Voyage autour du monde ex?cut? ... sur la corvette La Coquille ... 1825, publi? par M. L.-I. Duperrey: vol. 1, Histoire du voyage (Duperrey), vol. 2, Zoologie (Lesson et Garnot), vol. 3, Botanique (Dumont d'Urville, Bory de Saint-Vincent, Brongniart), vol. 4, Hydrographie (Duperrey) (Paris 1826-30). Quotations from Bory de Saint-Vincent (1827) and references to Julien-Joseph Virey ( 1824) were found in Laurent Mucchielli, 'Autour des "Instructions sur les Boschimans" d'Henri Thuli?', in C. Blanckaert (ed.), D terrain des sciences humaines (XVIIIe-XXe si?cles) (Paris 1996), 211.

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combining their measurements with brief observations of the behaviour of Pacific Islanders, Quoy and Gaimard identified traits such as wariness ? 'a sort of instinct in half-savage men, as in most animals' ? a predisposition to theft, a 'carnivorous instinct' that led to cannibalism, and so on.11

An Invention Bordering on Imposture

Melanesia (M?laniens, Bory de Saint-Vincent) To attribute the Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia nomenclature to Dumont d'Urville, as is often the case, can be argued to be a historical error set in motion by Dumont d'Urville himself in 1834. Dumont d'Urville wrote in his 1834 introduction 'I name ...', but the naming was not entirely his to claim. In the 1832 paper read to the Soci?t? de G?ographie, Dumont d'Urville quoted his sources, but researchers have often overlooked this paper, published in a 19th-century journal, then reprinted among the hundreds of pages ofthe narrative ofthe 1826-29 voyage and never published in English. Since the early 1820s, Dumont d'Urville had assiduously attended meetings of botanical and geographical societies. He had made an early name for himself in botany and, aged 15 (1805), had already come to the notice of natural scientists. He joined the navy, where his reputation grew after an expedition to Greece and Turkey, both for his herbarium and for the fact that he helped France to secure the Venus de Milo. He received a promotion to the rank of lieutenant and by 1821 was working in the Hydrography Department of the French navy in Paris. Map making was new to him and, shortly afterwards in 1822, the opportunity arose for his first expedition to the under Duperrey in the Coquille. Among other , Dumont d'Urville became acquainted with the 'Great Ocean'.12 The expedition's itinerary took Dumont d'Urville first to the islands now called Polynesia, and then the western islands, now called Melanesia. He was keenly interested in differences in the skin colour of the inhabitants of the South Seas, because his interest in botany had led him to read Cuvier. Bory de Saint-Vincent had already noted the presence of in Oceania. Faithful to Cuvier on the need to distinguish 'Black' from 'White' and 'Yellow' races ? and aware of the fact that the 'Blacks' ofthe Pacific were rather different from the 'Negroes' of Africa ? he had suggested, in an article in 1825 and a book in 1827 dealing with the human race, the term 'M?laniens'13 (in other words 'Blacks', but using the Greek root melas rather than the Romance root ne(g)ro).

11 Cited by Marc Renneville, 'Un terrain phr?nologique dans le grand oc?an: autour du voyage de Dumoutier sur Y Astrolabe en 1837-1840', in Blanckaert (ed.), Le terrain, 93. Jacques Guillon, Dumont d'Urville, 1790-1842 (Paris 1986). Guillon gives background information that sheds light on Dumont d'Urville's ambition and thirst for recognition. He was raised by his mother and brought up to feel that his , who had lost a great deal during the French Revolution, had to regain its position. He considered, both during his studies and later in the 1820s, that his worth and abilities were not fully recognised. This aspect of his character appears to have played a role in his haste to present his divisions of Oceania once he saw that his plans might be forestalled by Domeny de Rienzi. 13 Jean-Baptiste-Genevi?ve-Marcellin Bory de Saint-Vincent, L'Homme ('homo'), essai zoologique sur le genre humain, 2nd edn 'with the addition of a new map to help understand the distribution of the human species over the surface of the

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So it was Bory de Saint-Vincent who, by extending Cuvier's general model of human classification based on skin colour, was at the root of the unfortunate invention of Melanesia. In his 1832 paper, Dumont d'Urville acknowledged Bory de Saint-Vincent's contribution, admitting that all he did was change the ending of the word. However, he was able to claim that he had considerably extended the term's geographic range by including Australia, and other islands within Melanesia.

Polynesia (Polyn?sie, Charles de Brosses)

Was Dumont d'Urville's invention of 'Melanesia' designed to harmonise with that of 'Polynesia', which had long been in use? Far from being coined by Dumont d'Urville, the term 'Polynesia' had been suggested by Charles de Brosses in 1756 to designate all the islands in the : Our globe is made up of three large expanses of land, Asia, Africa and America, and three large expanses of , the Ethiopian or , the Atlantic or Northern Ocean, the Pacific or . In relation to this, we can even divide the unknown southern world into three parts, lying to the south of the three mentioned above. One in the Indian Ocean to the south of Asia that I will call for that reason . Another, that I will name Magellanic after the man who discovered it ... I shall include in the third everything contained in the vast Pacific Ocean, and I shall give this part the name of Polynesia because of the many islands it encompasses (from 'polus' multiplex and 'n?sos' ?nsula).u

De Brosses was less concerned with proposing a geographic nomenclature than he was with furthering strategic, political, even colonial goals. He wanted to encourage the French court to send expeditions towards the 'Austral Lands' ? lands that he maintained should be discovered without delay. De Brosses wanted to give the impression with the word 'Polynesia' that, apart from the famous southern that would surely be found one day, the Pacific was likely to conceal 'many' lucrative spice islands: 'Apart from the Austral Lands [the proposed southern continent], it is impossible for there not to be, in the immense Pacific Ocean, between and America, a large number of islands rich in spiceries'.15

Micronesia (Domeny de Rienzi)

Dumont d'Urville, with ideas about classifying races, wanted to make a name for footnote continued

', 2 vols (Paris 1827). In his 1832 paper, Dumont d'Urville referred to the first edition of Bory de Saint-Vincent's text published in 1825 in an encyclopaedia of natural history. See Douglas, 'Seaborne ethnography', n. 7. Bory de Saint-Vincent had previously circulated his text to advertise the forthcoming encyclopaedia in a brochure reviewed critically in the Bulletin de la Soci?t? de G?ographie, 4:27 (1825), 17-18. Charles de Brosses, Histoire des aux Terres Australes: contenant ce que l'on seau des moeurs et des productions des Contr?es d?couvertes jusqu'? ce jour et o? il est trait? de l'utilit? d'y faire d?plus amples d?couvertes et des moyens d'y former un ?tablissement (Paris 1756), I, 13, 80. The words 'polus' and 'n?sos' are printed in Greek letters in the book. 15 Ibid., 4. For an article on de Brosses see Tom Ryan, ' "Le Pr?sident des Terres Australes": Charles de Brosses and the French Enlightenment beginnings of Oceanic anthropology', Journal of Pacific History, 37 (2002), 157-86.

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himself as the man who charted Oceania ? as he says at the start of his 1832 paper ? and also to put down his ideas about race, as he implies in the introduction of his 1834 compilation. To do so, he had to match and even surpass two treatises that had been regarded as authoritative for more than half a century: the first by Charles de Brosses, the first author to suggest various geographical terms and a racial theory for the in 1756, and the second by J.R. Forster, the first to expound from direct observations a racial theory for the variety of people seen in the South Seas. As he explains in his 1832 paper, Dumont d'Urville wanted to present the full account of his 1826-29 voyage, reserving the final volume to set out his nomencla ture and theory of the racial variation in Oceania. However, his timetable was disturbed by an unexpected event. Gr?goire-Louis Domeny de Rienzi, a litde known navigator but, like Dumont d'Urville, a member of the Soci?t? de G?ogra phie, presented a new chart of the 'Great Ocean' at a meeting on 16 December 1831, along with a terminology for five regional divisions. Dumont d'Urville was at the meeting, at which time only the first volume of the 1826-29 voyage had been published, so it was clearly necessary to abandon his publication schedule. He finished writing the text on 27 December 1831 and presented it at the next meeting of the Soci?t? de G?ographie on 5 January 1832. The paper, 'Sur les ?les du Grand Oc?an', appeared in the following issue of the Soci?t? de G?ographie's Bulletin. Meanwhile, Domeny de Rienzi's paper, although 'sent to the editorial committee', according to a note in the Bulletin,1^ was not published. Domeny de Rienzi's ideas were not printed until 1836-37 and were covered in the introduction to a volume he put together summarising the results of expeditions to the South Seas.17 In that volume Domeny de Rienzi proposed rather elaborate geographic terms for Oceania and distinguished five areas and four races within it. The races were differentiated, predictably, by skin colour. One of Domeny de Rienzi's suggestions had apparendy caught Dumont d'Urville's attention at the December 1831 meet ing. Among the fair-skinned peoples, Domeny de Rienzi distinguished between a Polynesian people who inhabited a smaller geographic area than the term con ceived by de Brosses, and a people occupying Micronesia. We do not know exacdy what term he used in December 1831, but it was one that enabled Dumont d'Urville to say in his January 1832 paper that in 'inventing' the term 'Micronesia', he was only changing the ending of a word proposed by Domeny de Rienzi a fortnight before. We do not know whether Dumont d'Urville had already thought of subdividing Polynesia to make a secondary geographic distinction for Microne

1 In the Bulletin de la Soci?t? de G?ographie, 103-4 (1831), 264?6, there is a summary ofthe 'session of 16 December 1831'. It mentions about 20 speakers (some merely reading letters). One is described as: 'Mr de Rienzi read a brief description ofthe fifth part ofthe world, which he was to have read to the Society in its general session on 25 November. This description, in which the author proposes a new classification and new names, has been sent to the committee ofthe Bulletin for publication therein.' Ibid., 266. Dumont d'Urville's possible role in the failure of Domeny de Rienzi's paper to be published in the Soci?t? de G?ographie Bulletin is unknown. Gr?goire-Louis Domeny de Rienzi, Oc?anie ou cinqui?me partie du monde: revue g?ographique et ethnographique de la Malaisie, de la Micron?sie, de la Polyn?sie et de la M?lan?sie: offrant les r?sultats des voyages et des d?couvertes de l'auteur et de ses devanciers, ainsi que les nouvelles classifications et divisions de ces contr?es (Paris 1836?37), 3 vols.

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sians, but in any case he followed Domeny de Rienzi's idea, while stating that the way Domeny de Rienzi had defined Micronesia was inadequate. Domeny de Rienzi's 1836-37 proposal, based, according to him, on his Decem ber 1831 lecture, was for the fivefold division of the Pacific and parts of . First was Malaysia with its centre in Borneo. Second was Micro nesia, covering much of northern Oceania and made up of'very small islands'. He adds in 1836-37 that Dumont d'Urville had already adopted his term: 'In the meeting on 5 January 1832, the illustrious navigator Mr Dumont d'Urville read a paper on the islands of the Great Ocean in which he adopted my second division of Micronesia and extended it southwards'. The third division was a scaled-up version of Dumont d'Urville's Polynesia: 'Polynesia, which I proposed to call Tabooed Plethonesia, that is a multitude of islands covered by taboo (a religious prohibition ...)'. This division included the Carolines, the Gilbert and (which are now all part of Micronesia), as well as the 'islands in the South Sea or the Great Ocean' from in the and in the west to the islands near the American coast (which are not Polynesian in the current sense of the term). 'Central Oceania' was the fourth division, comprising New Guinea, which Domeny de Rienzi called '',18 New Britain, New Ireland and the Islands. The final division was 'Endamenia or Southern Oceania', consisting of Australia, New Caledonia and Mallicolo/Malekula (Vanuatu). Do meny de Rienzi's model was a rather simplistic geometrical partition of Oceania. After presenting his five divisions, Domeny de Rienzi tells his readers that Oceania is inhabited by 'four clearly separate races'. He calls them 'Malay, Polynesian, Endamen and Papuan'. The Malays were 'civilised', while some were capable of making social progress, particularly the , Hawaiians and Tongans, but not the Maori. The ranking of races reflected the value Europeans attributed (since the mid-18th century) to societies which appeared to be organised into 'kingdoms' and 'nations'. At the other end of the scale, the black Endamens were 'those who, in the human species, are closest to the brute ... , with no laws, arts or industry'. Above them came the black Papuans, who were classified according to the development of their social arts. Among these Papuans, the people of Viti (Fiji) came first and those of Mallicolo (Malekula) last. Dumont d'Urville also raised the status of in his 1832 paper, because it was proposed that Fijians had absorbed the rudiments of civilisation from contact with their Polynesian neighbours in .

Continuity Rather Than an Invention

Domeny de Rienzi's 1831 proposal (as we can read it in his 1836-37 book) thus left the people with black skin in two groups. In January 1832, Dumont d'Urville

Which was scarcely a novelty, since people had long spoken of the 'Land of the Papuans' as well as of 'New Guinea'. See Chris Ballard, ' "Oceanic Negroes": racial science and the inscription of the Papuan body, 1820-1900', seminar, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 28 May 2001.

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criticised the illogical and purely geometrical of Domeny de Rienzi's divisions. He modified the Polynesia/Micronesia partition and suggested a single term, Melanesia, to replace Endamenia and Papuasia. Like Domeny de Rienzi, Dumont d'Urville took de Brosses's term 'Polynesia' and applied it, in the main, to peoples who seemed to speak a similar and widespread language. Also like Domeny de Rienzi, he made a secondary distinction among the '' and separated a 'Micronesian' people, whose societies were believed to be less stratified and not as stricdy bound by the etiquette of tabu, from the generally more advanced Polynesian people. Then, following Bory de Saint Vincent, he grouped the dark-skinned people of Oceania under a learned term for 'black' people (Melanians/). That is where Dumont d'Urville's 'invention' of Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia starts and ends.

The of Dumont d'Urville's Invention The first historical context for the invention of 'Melanesia' is thus between 1800 and 1830, when an essentialist and physiological idea of Oceanic 'races' solidified. For Dumont d'Urville the influence of Cuvier, Saint-Vincent, Quoy and Gaimard was probably significant, particularly since he was eager to link his name to the classification, by subdivision, of 'living beings'. This subdivision could have focused on the plants of Pont Euxin, a path that Dumont d'Urville embarked upon in 1820, with his botanical study of material gathered in Greece. Chance and perhaps ambition decided otherwise, and it turned out instead to be the human 'races' of Oceania on which he exercised a taste for classification. However, there is another, much older, historical context for the invention of 'Melanesia'. The question that must be asked is, why were European scholars in the early 19th century so interested in a distinction between 'dark' and 'fair' peoples in Oceania? One could think that the answer lies in the shift of the theories of human variation. But this is not so. There is now a reasonable body of work dealing with different theories of human variety between 1730-90 and 1830-1950, and reasons for their acceptance.19 In the

19 Claude Blanckaert, 'Monog?nisme et polyg?nisme en France de Buffon ? Broca (1749-1880)', PhD thesis, Universit? Paris-1 (Paris 1981); idem, 'Postface' in Mich?le Duchet, Anthropologie et histoire au si?cle des Lumi?res (Paris 1995), 565-608; idem, 'Le "Manuel op?ratoire" de la raciologie. Les instructions aux voyageurs de la Soci?t? d'Anthropologie de Paris (1860-1885)', in Blanckaert (ed.), Le terrain, 139-73; idem, 'La "naturalisation" de l'Homme de Linn? ? Darwin. Arch?ologie du d?bat Nature/', in Albert Ducros, Jacqueline Ducros and Fr?d?ric Joulian (eds), La culture est-elle naturelle? Histoire, ?pist?mologie et applications r?centes du concept de culture (Paris 1998), 15-24. See too the proceedings of seminars and colloquia that he conducted at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Centre Alexandre-Koyr? and elsewhere, in Gradhiva, 5 (1988), 78 and Gradhiva, 7 (1989), 100-3. Laurent Mucchielli, 'Autour des "Instructions sur les Boschimans" d'Henri Thuli?', in Blanckaert (ed.), Le terrain, 201-42; idem, 'Sociologie versus anthropologie raciale: l'engagement d?cisif des durkheimiens dans le contexte "fin de si?cle" (1885-1914)', Gradhiva, 21 (1997), 77-95; idem, 'La d?naturalisation de l'homme: le tournant durkheimien de l'ethnologie fran?aise (1890-1914)', in Ducros, Ducros and Joulian (eds), La culture est-elle naturelle, 41?69. Serge Tcherk?zoff, Le mythe occidental de la sexualit? polyn?sienne, 1928-1999: M. Mead, D. Freeman et (Paris 2001), Ch. 10.

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first period, the unity and uniqueness of humankind was asserted. The barrier between and animals could not be crossed, human 'races' were only 'varieties', even though the social scale used to rank societies, that went from 'savagery' bordering on animality to 'civilisation', was immense. Buffon's work is emblematic of this period, and Charles de Brosses andJ.R. Forster largely followed his approach in their consideration of the Pacific. In the second period, the idea of 'race' acquired an essentialist character. The human unity and its elevated position in the 'System of Divine Nature' championed by Buffon was broken up and scattered along a 'zoological' axis bearing all living species, human and animal. The unfortunate consequence of this shift was that some 'savages' were regarded as being more animal than human. But in this new paradigm, many physical features other than skin colour, such as body height and facial features, could have been used as the main criterion for dividing 'races'. In the case of African peoples, for instance, hair type, facial features and height were used to separate 'Ethiopids' from 'Negroes'. Distinctions based on hair type were also often used by the 'discoverers' of the Pacific. But the most important criterion by far for distinguishing between human races was skin colour, using the paired opposites white/black and fair/dark. The history of this approach which gave rise, among other unfortunate ideas, to the invention of Melanesia, or more precisely, the racial opposition between Polynesia and Melanesia, needs to be considered. The first treatise published by a scholar and traveller on the classification of the peoples ofthe Pacific was the well-known 18th century account ofJ.R. Forster, who had sailed with Captain Cook in 1773-75. Forster emphasised that there were two human varieties in the South Seas, each characterised by skin colour. However, even before Forster's work a nascent dual-population schema based on skin colour was in existence. The sedentary scholar Charles de Brosses in 1756 launched the hypothesis of an 'old race' with black skin, who were thought to have occupied the entire 'torrid zone' of the earth, consisting of the area between the tropics. The 'discovery' of Australia also played a role in this hypothesis, with an account of its 'hideous, black' beings. And the idea can be traced even further back, to 1595 when the Spaniards, trying to find the , arrived instead on the previously unknown coasts ofthe Marquesas. They were astonished to find a 'white' people where they had expected to see a 'black' people. The context for this belief lay outside Oceania and appears to be tied to European contrasts of African 'Negroes' with American 'Indians' (see below). Furthermore, there is an underlying continuity in questions about the existence of peoples with black skin. It is the fact that the common recurring pattern of Western classifications, whatever the subject is, consists of a dualistic scheme.20 The transition from recording human 'varieties' to placing that variation within a binary

20 See S. Tcherk?zoff, Dual Classification Reconsidered (Cambridge 1987); idem, 'Hierarchical reversal, ten years on (Africa, , Polynesia)', Journal ofthe Anthropological Society of Oxford, 25:2 (1993), 133-67 and 25:3 (1994) 229-53;

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framework based on skin colour separates travel accounts from learned treatises. Often the same person was the author of both genres. While engaged in his voyages, the naturalist and/or the captain was content to accumulate examples of different human varieties. Later, when it was time to provide an overview to a 'scientific' audience, another discourse took over. Since the 17th century, the model used for synthetic discourse was a layered construction made up of distinctive oppositions: A/B, B1/B2, and so on. The line of reasoning was locked into a series of hierarchically arranged dichotomies. Thus, observations on the variety of skin inevitably led to a 'white/black' or 'fair/dark' conclusion. At the top were Europeans ? the 'whites' ? ranked first by Buffon and contrasted with other 'coloured' people. Below were contrasts made between human groups living on non-European , like the 'Negroes' versus the 'Indians'; in Oceania the 'blacks' versus the 'yellows'; in Africa the true 'Negroes' versus the 'Kaffirs', and so forth. Once 'blacks' have been opposed to 'whites', Buffon proceeds to make a distinction among the 'blacks', between people with the darkest skin and those with a less , to identify the '(true) Negroes' from the 'Kaffirs'. He notes that, as the world contains a great number of black peoples, it is 'necessary to divide the blacks into different races and I think they can be reduced to two principal races'. De Brosses and then Forster were both admirers of Buffon and brought this simple dualistic mode of classification to their views about the Pacific.

Africans and Indians

We must bear in mind the early and systematic contrast between the 'Negro slaves' from Africa and the 'proud Indians' of the , which allowed the European idea of an exotic opposition between a black-skinned race and a fair-skinned race to germinate. De Brosses, for instance, had supposed that in all the tropical countries the black race represented the earliest occupants, which meant, at the time he was writing, the most backward. For a long time, the west coast of Africa was known as 'Nigritia', and it was only associated with the slave trade. Even in the mid-18th century, when de Brosses was writing, almost nothing was known of the continent's interior. Trading companies were not interested in exploration, since wealth, in the form of slaves, was brought to them at the coast. There was no silk or spice road to be discovered. Judgements about African people were therefore extrapolated largely from their behaviour in slavery. The Senegalese, for example, were 'easy to discipline', while the Bambaras were 'thieves'.21 Early philosophical interest in these peoples focused on rebel slaves. In comparison, the Amerindian kingdoms long since conquered by the Spaniards fired European imagination. Moreover, in , the trading companies footnote continued

idem, 'L'inclusion du contraire (L. Dumont), la hi?rarchie enchev?tr?e (J.P. Dupuy) et le rapport sacr? /pouvoir. Relectures et r?vision des mod?les ? propos de l'Inde', Culture, 14:2 (1994), 113-34 and 15:2 (1994), 33-48. See M. Duchet's excellent summary on 'Africa in the Enlightenment' in herAnthropologie et histoire au si?cle des lumi?res (Paris 1995), 33-7.

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encouraged exploration in the interests of the fur trade and to find outlets further west, which allowed favourable observations of the indigenous people to be relayed back to . From the early 18th century, a few Indians were also brought to Europe, where they were exhibited as chiefs and 'kings'. The result is illustrated by the striking contrast between what was said in the second half of the 18th century about the Canadian Indians and the Hottentots of South Africa. Since Jacques Cartier in 1545, accounts ofthe Indians in were written by adventurers or missionaries. In the 18th century, more accounts were added by soldiers, some of whom were French, who tended to idealise the figure of the warrior chief or the wise elder. Hurons, Mohicans and Iroquois were written about by philosophers of the Enlightenment and became famous names. Who, then, replaced them in philosophical discourse? The Polynesians, after Bougainville's 'discovery' ofthe Tahitians in 1768. But for the Hottentots, seen by those who called in at South Africa on the way to the , the travellers apparently felt nothing but revulsion. As early as 1766, when Buffon wanted to contrast the most human-like of the apes {orang-utan) with the most ape-like humans, he chose the Hottentots because of their 'frizzy wool' hair, deep-set eyes 'like those of the animals', hairy bodies, dark skin colour, poor and squalid lifestyle.22 It is also significant that the Indians of the were described as living in stratified societies headed by chiefs who were capable of engaging in warfare, whereas the Hottentots were described as forming egalitarian, peaceful groups. As for the slaves from , it was not thought that they could ever have lived in organised societies. The same contrast in social stratification will be used by others, starting with Dumont d'Urville, to draw a distinction between the develop ment of the Polynesians, on the one hand, and 'savage' Melanesians, on the other.

The Invention of the 'Handsome, White' Polynesian: Spanish Arrival in the Marquesas (1595) The first period of exploration in the Pacific was dominated by the Spanish and the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch. The aim was to find lands to colonise, and more particularly, to locate precious metals. The model was the conquest of America with the cross and the pick, or the aggressive mercantilism of the newly formed Netherlands. The explorers' state of mind is summed up in the official instructions given to Quiros:

Learn from the natives whether there are other islands or extensive lands near, if they are inhabited, of what colour are the natives, whether they eat human flesh, if they are friendly or carry on war. Enquire whether they have gold in dust, or in small lumps, or in ornaments; silver worked or to be worked: metals, all kinds of pearls, spices and salt... Never allow our people to mix with the natives, nor leave them to join company, owing to the danger ...

See quotation and reference in ibid., 243. 23 Clements Markham (ed.), The Voyages of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, 1595 to 1606 (London 1904) I, ser.2, XTV, 149 and 188-9. Mendafta's second voyage (contact with the Marquesas, 1595), on which Quiros was the master pilot,

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The first two questions focus on skin colour and whether the natives were cannibals, thus preparing the ground for reacting positively toward a people who were 'white' and who did not practise cannibalism. That is what came to pass, facilitated by the fact that the Spaniards were looking for the Solomon Islands, which they had visited years before and whose inhabitants had dark skin and seemed to be cannibals. They failed to find the , instead reaching an they named the 'Marquesas', lying in what is now known as East Polynesia. On 21 July 1595, when the Spaniards reached Fatu-Hiva24 in the Marquesas, they were met, according to the official report, by 70 carrying around 400 people, who were described as: 'almost white, and of very graceful shape, well formed, robust... Their skin was clear, showing them to be a strong and healthy race, and indeed robust. They all came naked [and on their skins were] patterns of blue colour, painted.'25 In his report, Quiros emphasised the islanders' beauty. They had white skin, a tall and broad build, with flowing hair. Among them were the most 'beautiful youths', but he added no comments specific to either sex.26 One of these 'beautiful youths' was aged about 10. Quiros said the youth was a boy, while another member of the expedition claimed it was a girl. The youth's countenance was described as 'like that of an angel, with an aspect and spirit that promised much [and the skin was] a good colour; not fair but white'.27 First contact, first vision. As Quiros's instructions show, the Spanish were keenly aware of skin colour. They admired the fact that the Polynesians had skin colour that was within the European range. The similarity of skin colour between the Spanish and the Polynesians appears to be the first step toward the possibility of boundary dissolution and assimilation. The second step toward assimilation was the appreciation of the 'naked' bodies of the Polynesian women, which preceded Bougainville's comparison of the Tahitian women to 'Venus'. However, a sequence of events which was to be repeated in many of the early contacts between Europeans and Polynesians soon followed. The Marquesans came on board and wanted to take whatever they found. The Spaniards were frightened and drove them off with swords and muskets. The islanders jumped into the water and came back in force to attack them. The Spanish decimated them. In his summary of the Marquesans, Quiros wrote: Some of the natives of these islands did not appear as white as those of Magdalena. They have the same form of speech ... The Chief Pilot did not see anything of the women, because he did not land at the time that they came; but all who saw them footnote continued

and Quiros's own voyage (1606) are known through Quiros's account, drafted by his secretary under his dictation or from his notes. It is the fullest text and the one I have used here. Ibid., 15-31, for the part ofthe voyage that concerns us here. There is also a much more succinct official report, signed by Quiros and addressed to the 'Lieutenant-General of His Majesty in the ', ibid., 149-53. 24 Menda?a called 'Magdalena'. 25 In all the accounts at that time, the Polynesians are described as 'naked', when in fact they were wearing a maro wrapped around the waist and covering the genitals; see Markham, The Voyages of Pedro, 16. 26 Ibid., 150. 27 Ibid., 17.

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reported that they had beautiful legs and hands, fine eyes, fair countenances, small waists, and graceful forms, and some of them prettier than the ladies of lima, who are famed for their beauty. Respecting their complexion, if it cannot be called white, it is nearly white.28

This was the start of a long story, the story of the admiring (male) European view of Polynesian women. It was the first time that Europeans had seen Polynesian women. There was not yet any reference to a 'Garden of Eden', and the theme of free love that Bougainville was so fond of was still far off. It was simply a matter of the beauty of the women, in the eyes of the sailors and officers, expressed through the possibility of cultural assimilation focusing on skin colour and the attraction to the 'graceful forms' of the women. Yet, there is also something imperial in this male view. The Spaniards had come from the conquered territory of Peru and had become accustomed to a particular colonial way of looking at its 'Indian women', to whom they explicitly compared Marquesan women. One aspect of may have added to the Spanish view of Marquesan women. Nineteenth-century ethnography has shown that the Polyne sian women and girls ceremoniously presented to newcomers were often selected from high-ranking females. Their status obliged them to spend much of their time inside dwellings to avoid the sun. During Cook's voyages, European observers remarked that low sun exposure was a sign of Polynesian rank, showing that light-skinned individuals were served by others who were obliged to spend more time outside in the gardens or gathering food in the sea. If the systematic avoidance of sun exposure by high-rank individuals applied in the 16th century, it might well have contributed to the surprise of the Spanish when they declared that the Polynesian women were 'very white' compared with the women of Lima. The same surprise and similar comments are found in later accounts, among both the French and the English, from 1760 to 1780, when European arrival in Polynesian islands can still be considered as 'early contact'.29 The Spanish view of the Marquesan people was developed by comparing them to Solomon Islanders. Thus the Marquesans became 'white'. Moreover, the Marquesan women were, Quiros noted, better looking than even the Lima women who were already 'famed for their beauty'. This is the first in a very long series of contrasts which in the 18th century led the French and English, particularly when they entered the Pacific from the east, to compare favourably the Tahitian women with the South American women, to strongly contrast the Tahitian society with the 'savage' people living along the Straits of Magellan (such as the 'Patagonians'), and later in their course to compare Melanesians unfavourably with the Tahitians.

Ibid., 27. In his official report, Quiros notes: 'These natives did not come before me like the others, but some very beautiful women were seen. I did not see them, but persons who had an opinion in the matter affirmed to me that there were as beautiful as women in lima, but white, and not so tall; and in Lima there are some very pretty.' Ibid., 151. For examples and references see S. Tcherk?zoff, Blanches Vahin?s: la cr?ation du mythe occidental de la sexualit? polyn?sienne, 1768-1928 (forthcoming), and for Samoa, S. Tcherk?zoff, First Contacts in Polynesia: the Samoan case (1722-1848) and comparisons (forthcoming).

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The Invention of the 'Coal Blacky 'Very Displeasing' Melanesian: Dampier in Australia (1688)30 Where did de Brosses find the information on which he based his theory of an 'old black race', published in 1756? He said that it came from the reports of travellers to the Austral Lands. But to be more precise, it lay in the contrast between two reports. Quiros's account (extracts of which were given a prominent place in de Brosses's work) invents the handsome, white . When, in 1688, William Dampier presented his description of the Australians (which de Brosses included in his compilation), we go to another extreme. Descriptions of 'angelic whites' were now replaced by 'coal blacks' who had the 'worst features of all the savages'. This description, the first that attempted to give details of the inhabitants, came after 80 years of brief incursions onto the coasts of New Holland (Australia) by the Dutch. Their testimonies were all unfavourable. There were no spices, no luxuriant forests, no peaceable welcome. Dampier was the source both for Buffon and de Brosses when it came to characterising 'New Hollanders':

The Inhabitants of this country are the miserablest People in the world ... no Houses and Skin garments, Sheep, Poultry, and Fruits of the Earth ... And setting aside their Humane Shape, they differ but little from Brutes. They are tall, strait bodied, and thin ... great Heads, round Fore-heads and great Brows ... The two Fore-teeth of their Upper-jaw are wanting in all of them, Men and Women, old and young; whether they draw them out, I know not... They are long visaged, and of a very unpleasing Aspect; having no one graceful Feature in their Faces. Their Hair is black, short and curl'd, like that of the Negroes: and not long and lank like the common Indians. The Colour of their Skins, both of their Faces and the rest of their Body, is Goal black, like that of the Negroes of Guinea. They have no sort of Cloaths; but a piece of the rind of a Tree ty'd like a Girdle ... no Houses, but lye in the open Air.

Dampier returned to New Holland in 1699 and reiterated his opinion of its people: 'the most unpleasant Looks and the worst Features of any People that I ever saw, tho' I have seen a great variety of Savages'.31 This was still the initial period of Pacific exploration when travellers were looking for profit, and there was a tendency to judge the people they encountered in terms of things that would be useful to Europe. Dampier was disappointed because he found nothing of commer cial interest in New Holland. It is interesting that skin colour is not the first issue raised by Dampier, although it is an important part of the description. Dampier's text shows us that in any case the significance of black skin was already established in European thought, and when qualified as 'coal black' it referred to the archetype 'Negroes' of Africa. The same comparison had already led to the Spanish giving the name of New Guinea

WHhen Dumont d'Urville 'invented' the term, he also applied it to the Australians. European academic tradition later separated Australia from Melanesia. 31 Albeit Gray (ed.), A New Voyage Round the World by William Dampier (London 1929), 312-13; Richard White, Inventing Australia: images and identity, 1688-1980 (Sydney 1981), 2-3; Jonathan Lamb, Vanessa Smith and Nicholas Thomas (eds), Exploration and Exchange: a South Seas anthology, 1680-1900 (Chicago 2000), 10-14.

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to the island's northern coast which they saw as inhabited by 'Negroes' like those of African Guinea.32 Although skin colour was not the only criterion, the groundwork had been laid for the opposition between two types of 'savages': 'Negroes' and 'Indians'. In general terms, Dampier's description of 'the miserablest' people with 'the most unpleasant looks' in the world, along with the 'Negro/Indian' opposition which was already commonplace, provided a contrast to Quiros's account of the 'handsome, white' islanders seen at the Marquesas. These groupings formed the framework which structured later ideas about the peopling of the Pacific. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that these ideas were channelled by a dualistic vision, explicit or implicit, of 'pleasant' looking 'Whites' and 'unpleasant' looking 'Blacks'.

Charles de Brosses and the Theory of an cOld Race' (1756)33 In 1750 de Brosses undertook an extensive compilation of accounts of voyages to the Pacific that was published in two volumes in 1756 with the title, Histoire des navigations aux Terres Australes ... 34 His aim was to draw the attention of the French Court to a poorly known of the earth. The introduction to the first volume set out the geographical terminology, introducing the term 'Polynesia'. In the conclusion to the second volume, de Brosses compared the known peoples of the Pacific, and established an opposition between two 'races'. He also developed the theme that 'no human species is indisciplinable'.35 He did this, apparently, to forestall an argument that the commercial and colonial development of the Pacific would be hindered by the wild, brutish and savage nature of its inhabitants. De Brosses's argument can be briefly summarised. Among the animals, the human species lives, by nature, in societies. Admittedly, the 'savages of the Austral Lands ... [are] pure animals ... They have not yet made any effort to rise from their original state.' Every animal is savage by birth, but because man has a 'more or less active principle of inclination for society', education and improvement is possible. It was simply a matter of activating this principle. The practical answer de Brosses gave to the threat posed by native peoples to his call for French involvement in the Pacific was to begin colonisation where the people were the 'least wild': 'Indeed, there are various human kinds that are more or less wild. According to the travellers' reports, those of the Land of the Papuans in [New] Guinea and [New] Britain are much less wild than those of New Holland [Australia].' The solution, then, was to avoid Australia and to begin colonising elsewhere, in

32 This was the Spaniard Ortiz de Retes. See Dans R. Swindler, 'Problems of Melanesian racial history', in Andrew P. Vayda, Peoples and of the Pacfa (New York 1968), 27. 33 The fact that de Brosses invented the word 'Polynesia' is known to a handful of specialists. But few people are aware that de Brosses is also the author of the first racial summary on the opposition between black and fairer people in the Pacific. Thanks to Tom Ryan who drew my attention to this aspect (pers. comm., European Society for Oceania Conference, Leyde, June 1999). De Brosses, Histoire des navigations. 35 This sentence is on II, 372. All the following quotations are taken from pp 374?83.

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particular, as the author explains, the island of 'Santo Espiritu' (Vanuatu). This was perhaps the earliest attempt to stratify Australian and Pacific peoples, and in it Australians were placed on the lowest level. Above the Australians came the 'Papuans'. So, Australians were fated to be below Melanesians. After 1832, Melanesians were placed below Micronesians, who in turn were below Polynesians. Thus, de Brosses in 1756 launched racial stratification which later typified academic thinking about the Pacific. The man planning to stimulate French colonisation of the Pacific was also a man of science, who had, like Buffon, been thinking about the question of the 'Varieties in the Human Species' since 1749.36 Thus, de Brosses could not resist a temptation to digress on the question about the degree of variation found among the inhabitants of the South Seas. He notes that travellers had recognised 'with some surprise' that among the inhabitants: 'There was a race very different from the other inhabitants ... They are black like the Negroes of Nigritia, with thick lips, frizzy woolly hair, in a word, in every respect like African Negroes.' The traveller whose writing guided de Brosses on this point was, of course, Dampier, and his negative judgements about the people of New Holland. Further more, de Brosses remarks that Dampier noticed that these people lacked the front teeth in the upper jaw 'as among some Negro people of Africa'. De Brosses then traces this race to the Philippines, where it was found to be

Very different in face, language and manners from the other, ancient inhabitants. of these islands, which we know to be foreign colonies of Malay peoples ... This Negro people of the Philippines is older on Manilla island than all the foreign colonies which have driven it into the rocks and inaccessible woods. The language of these blacks, which is older than the Tagalog language of the Malays, is neither known nor understood by them. They are completely savage, for they have neither laws nor arts.

The picture that is drawn is of an autochthonous people, living in caves or woods, in a pre-social or nearly pre-social state. If the first inhabitants were overrun by the invaders, it was because they were not as clever and industrious. Moreover, the invaders were 'Malays', and thus people who lived on the fringes of the great eastern civilisations. The autochthonous people of the islands conquered by the Malays could only be more primitive, as was expected from the dark colour of their skin. De Brosses considered that the autochthonous race was not confined to New Holland or the Philippines, but had once had a much wider distribution:

I cannot help conjecturing that the frizzy blacks, such as they are found in the middle of Africa and in the interior of the Asian islands, are the first inhabitants of the torrid zone; that it is a more brutish and wilder species of man than the others; that other species ... taking advantage of a better nature, have long since driven it out of its lands in Asia and forced it into inaccessible places.

The image of the Australians could have developed differendy if de Brosses had read other accounts, or if his work had remained unknown. But de Brosses's

36 Title ofthe last chapter ofthe Histoire naturelle de l'homme, 1749; see Duchet, Anthropologie et Histoire au si?cle des Lumi?res, 231.

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The Distinctions Used by de Brosses

I have suggested that the place of Australian Aborigines in European thought was already determined in 1756, and so, too, was that of Polynesians (in the modern sense of the word) since travellers considered Polynesians to look similar to the Malays. Through Buffon and de Brosses, Dampier's ranking of dark-skinned people became firmly established in learned circles. J.R. Forster amplified and reinforced the ideas of Buffon and de Brosses in his 1778 treatise. This work was widely circulated, paving the way for the racial dichotomy expounded in the 19th century. Yet, in 1756, the dividing line between 'races' was not only based on skin colour. It included other physical traits and 'social' characteristics that revealed an 'older race' with a more 'backward' mode of life. There was not yet a strong contrast between Polynesians and Melanesians. There was not yet a general distinction between the 'yellow Malayans' and all those with a 'black' or 'darker' coloured skin. The dividing line separated, on the one hand, an 'old race', formerly spread throughout the world, inhabiting 'the middle of Africa', hiding 'in the interior ofthe Asian islands' and (in the Pacific) in New Holland, and, on the other hand, all the other inhabitants of the Pacific. These other inhabitants included the people of 'Polynesia' as de Brosses conceived the term, which contained dark-skinned people (the Papuans) as well as light-skinned people (the Marquesans). For de Brosses, the process of racial stratification was not entirely a matter of skin colour. However, because he talks of a 'Negro people' and 'frizzy blacks' with reference to the old race, taking up the disparaging comments that were applied to the people of 'Nigritia', he falls into a European tradition that disparages peoples who are the blackest. De Brosses's text is significant because it was the first attempt to organise the human variation recorded by travellers into a coherent system. As noted above, his two-volume work was found in the libraries of many of the observers and explorers who later ventured to the Pacific. Indeed, in 1756 de Brosses's book was the only detailed synthesis of the voyages made to the Pacific in the previous 200 years. His readership was therefore very wide. His readers absorbed not only the history ofthe previous voyages, the names and positions of the islands, but also the racial theme proposed by de Brosses in a summarised form.

Johann Reinhold Forster (1778), a Follower of Buffon

After de Brosses's two volumes, the second influential treatise to put forward a classification ofthe peoples ofthe Pacific was written by J.R. Forster and published in 1778. The second section of Chapter 6 was headed 'On the Varieties of the Human Species, relative to Colour, Size, Form, Habit, and Natural Turn of Mind

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in the Natives of the South-Sea Isles'.37 The tide shows that Forster was following Buffon's works in which an animal species was commonly described according to its physical appearance and dominant behavioural trait.38 Note, too, that he listed skin colour first in the categories for the description of physical appearance, as did Buffon.39 The opening text in this section states that

The varieties of the human species are, as everyone knows, very numerous. The small size, the tawny colour, the mistrustful temper, are as peculiar to the Esquimaux; as the noble and beautiful figure, and outline of the body, the fair complexion, and the treacherous turn of mind, to the inhabitants of Tcherkassia. The native of Senegal is characterised by a timorous disposition, by his jetty black skin, and crisped wooly hair. A majestic size, red hair, a blue languishing eye, a remarkably fair complexion, and a warlike, intrepid, but open and generous temper distinguish the Teutonic tribes of the North of Europe, from the rest of mankind. But to enumerate all these varieties, requires too much time.40

In this passage it is difficult to avoid the implicit ranking of the human 'varieties' mentioned by Forster, even if this was not his purpose. Only the last example, that of Northern Europeans, has consistendy flattering characteristics. Secondly, the descriptions of the four 'races' are presented in successive pairs, each forming an opposition as regards colour: the 'tawny' Esquimaux versus the 'fair' inhabitants of Tcherkassia, and the 'jetty black skin' of the Senegalese versus the 'remarkably fair complexion' of the northern Europeans. It is not surprising, therefore, that Forster, when he presents his findings on the 'natives of the South-Sea Isles', starts with the contrast between 'two great varieties', the one 'more fair' and the other 'blacker': 'We chiefly observed two great varieties of people in the South Seas; the one more fair, well limbed, athletic, of a fine size, and a kind benevolent temper; the other blacker, the hair just beginning to become woolly and crisp, the body more slender and low, and their temper, if possible, more brisk, though somewhat mistrustful.'41 Consciously or implicidy, Forster's 'observations' about the inhabitants of the South Seas merely repeat a contrast that he had already used for mankind in general, the opposition between fair and black. The first variety in the Pacific is 'more fair', the second 'blacker'. The rest of the physical and character traits are consistent with the values underlying the skin-colour contrast. Forster inherited the ideology of de Brosses and Buffon which emphasised the universalism and stratification of human existence. Forster was a firm believer that humankind was a single physical species, but he saw that the physical unity was interrupted by social divisions, such as the divide separating the savage state from the civilised state. In

37 Nicholas Thomas, Harriet Guest and Michael Dettelbach (eds), Observations made during a voyage round the world, Johann Reinhold Forster ( 1996), 155 if. 38 Buffon is cited by Forster in the first rank of authors whose works had a strong general influence on him, in the 'Preface' written by Forster in May 1778, ibid., 8. 39 Talking about human varieties, Buffon wrote 'The first and most striking ... is colour' (Duchet, Anthropologie et histoire, 250). ^Thomas et al., Observations, 153. 41 ibid.

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the 'varieties of the human species', skin colour and height were placed on an axis, with fair and tall people at one end and black and short people at the other. This simplification of human difference, social and physical, was aided by a coincidence inherent in exploration. Cook's 1772 expedition, which was the second for the English captain but the first and only opportunity for Forster to travel in the Pacific, was restricted to what we now call Polynesia, with short visits to the (Vanuatu) and New Caledonia. Cook's previous voyage had already established the physical, cultural and, in particular, linguistic similarities of the inhabitants of , the ,42 the , the and New Zealand. The second voyage confirmed and broadened this similarity to the people living in Tonga, and the Marquesas. The second voyage also visited Tanna and Malekula in Vanuatu, and New Caledonia. Forster's observa tions were therefore based on a set of islands whose human unity was already established, and Vanuatu and New Caledonia, whose people were new to Europeans. Skin colour was used to highlight the difference: We chiefly observed two great varieties of people in the South Seas; the one more fair ... , the other blacker ... [and] mistrustful. The first race inhabits O-Taheitee, and the Society Isles, the Marquesas, the Friendly Isles [Tonga], Easter-Island, and New-Zeeland. The second race peoples New-Caledonia, Tanna, and the New Hebrides, especially Mallicolo. Forster adds that each of the two 'races' was divided:

Each of the above two races of men, is again divided into several varieties, which form the gradation towards the other race; so that we find some of the first race almost as black and slender as some of the second; and in this second race are some strong athletic figures, which may almost vie with the first; however, as we have many good reasons for comprehending in one tribe ?ill the islanders enumerated under the first race, we could not help giving to all a general character, from which, on account of the extent and compass, wherein these nations are dispersed, the outskirts or extremes must deviate.43

Thus, on the basis of what is known about the first race, Forster attempts to identify the second. This was done using skin colour, since there was no linguistic unity or obvious shared cultural behavioural traits. The apparent cultural unity of the 'first race', combined with a contrast in skin colour, led Forster to discard the model of a continuum and to conclude that there was an opposition between the two races. The human 'varieties' in the South Seas were now reduced to two races, and Forster had therefore marked out the route that eventually led to the distinction between Polynesia and Melanesia. Melanesia, as a term, did not yet exist, but the ground was prepared to identify in negative terms a category which would be the opposite of the people and lifestyles glimpsed in present-day Polynesia.

42 The name given by , apparently in honour of the Royal Society of Astronomy (London) which helped the Admiralty plan Cook's first expedition to observe the transit of Venus in the Pacific. 43 Thomas et al., Observations, 153-4.

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Downgrading the 'Blacks'

Forster used 'race' as a synonym for 'variety', using both terms in his treatise, as did Buffon and de Brosses. Nevertheless, it must be conceded that Forster paves the way for paying special attention to skin colour. When Forster gave details of the two races, he put the first race in the following order: Tahiti, Marquesas, Tonga, Easter Island, New Zealand. Why this order? Because he goes from the fairest to the least fair, and as he notes, from the most to the least beautiful. The Tahitians' skin was described as: 'less tawny than that of a Spaniard, and not so coppery as that of an American; it is of a lighter tint than the fairest complexion of an inhabitant of the East-Indian islands.'44 The Marquesans were 'more tawny'. The Tongans were slighdy inferior because their skin was 'of a darker hue'. The Easter Islanders have 'a tawny complexion, rather darker than that of the Friendly-Isles'. For the New Zealand Maori, Forster is in an awkward position. He has already described the Easter Islanders as 'tawny' and cannot go further since the difference between the first race and the second race is that the first has a skin colour ranging from fair to tawny, whereas the second is 'more or less black'. The dilemma was resolved by saying that the practice of facial tattooing, specific to the inhabitants of New Zealand, made their faces 'more darkened' than their natural 'tawny' colour.45 If Forster placed Tahitians above other people belonging to the first race, it was because he already supported the idea that Tahiti was an earthly paradise, as set out by Bougainville in 1771. Forster had translated Bougainville's book into English and in it he had read passages admiring the Tahitian islands and the lifestyle of its inhabitants, which clearly inspired him for some of his own pages on Tahiti in his 1778 book. In contrast, Forster was disparaging about the Maori. Apart from their skin colour, he found their customs more barbaric. Incessant warfare, cannibalism, and apparent women's low status (judged from a European male sexist point of view)46 all indicated a people who were far from attaining 'civilisation'. Significandy, the New Zealander's country was on the fringes of those occupied by the other members of the first race sector.47 The remote geographic location strengthens Forster's negative impression of their customs since he believed that the climate of the tropical regions was conducive to human prosperity, but in countries far from the tropics, people like the and the Patagonians had 'degenerated' under the influence of what he thought was a less than ideal

44 Ibid., 154. 45 Ibid., 158-9. I shall not go into the tragic mistake that led Europeans to measure the social status of Polynesian women by the freedom these women seemed to have to offer themselves sexually to Europeans. Margaret Jolly has already examined this matter in detail. M. Jolly, ' "Ill-natured comparisons": and relativism in European representations of ni-Vanuata from Cook's second voyage', History and Anthropology, 5 (1992), 3-4 and 331-64; idem, 'From Point Venus to Bali Ha'i: eroticism and exoticism in representations ofthe Pacific', in Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly (eds), Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure: sexualities in Asia and the Pacific (Chicago 1997), 99-122; idem, 'White shadows in the darkness: representations of Polynesian women in early cinema', , 20 ( 1997), 125-50. 47 Thomas et al., Observations, 158.

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climate.48 Within this idea is the tendency, through the myth of the Tahitian paradise, to cast the Tahitians as the most beautiful people among the first race, and to construct a pseudo-climatic theory of Paradise lost ? those who had moved furthest from Tahiti had degenerated the most.49 Here, Forster goes further than Buffon who believed that a 'temperate' climate was the most propitious to civilisation.50 After listing the 'Polynesian' islands, Forster then presents the islands of the second race in the following order: New Caledonia, Tanna and Malekula. He compared the people of New Caledonia to those of Australia and found them to be 'totally different'. In doing so, Forster has assimilated the distinction between Australians and other black peoples made by de Brosses. The men and women of New Caledonia were 'of a swarthy colour', with 'frizzy but not very woolly hair', whereas the hair of the 'Negro' was 'woolly'.51 The people of Tanna were 'almost of the same swarthy colour as the former', but the women were 'all ill-favoured, nay, some very ugly'. Lastiy, the people of Malekula were a 'small, nimble, slender, black and ill-favoured set of beings; that of men I ever saw, border the nearest upon the tribe of monkies'.52 We shall retain in conclusion that, long before Dumont d'Urville's invention, the 'black' races were already labelled in the most disparaging terms. But, until the 1800s, this long-standing association is implicit. No author, for instance, uses it as a rational starting point on which to base a worldwide system of racial variation. Naturalists tried to classify human races using a confused mix of environmental, physical, psychological and cultural traits. In the 1800s a new 'science' of race became predicated on the idea, from Cuvier and others, that it was important to keep separate the Whites, Yellows and Blacks. Then, the lesson derived from the former narratives and treatises, which already contained many elements for contrasting in the Pacific fairer and darker peoples, inevitably took a new shape and led to a dual-race contrast theory. It chanced that the person who presented the 'new' racial geography for Oceania was the botanist and navigator Dumont

The idea of degeneration due to climate is already in Buffon's work, except that Buffon took the example ofthe people of the 'great north' and compared them to the people of the temperate zones (Duchet, Anthropologie et histoire, 252). 4 In his essay on Forster, Nicholas Thomas credits the naturalist with a rather too scientific approach (according to the theories of the time). Studies on the history of European interpretations of Pacific peoples often overlook the impact of Bougainville's voyage, not only in France but in neighbouring countries, from 1769 (first publication in the Parisian press) and especially after 1772, when Bougainville's book had been translated into English by Forster. Buffon lists 'the inhabitants of the northern provinces of the Mogul empire and Persia, the , Turks, Georgians, Mingreliens, Circassians, Greeks and all the peoples of Europe, [who] are the most handsome, whitest and best built of all the earth'; if people so far removed from one another had succeeded in developing 'admirable' traits it was because they were 'located at a more or less equal distance from the equator' (Duchet, Anthropohgie, 255). Buffon believed that the human species was born white and was then diversified by the climate, giving as examples the 'Lap' and the 'Negro', who is 'the same man, who was varnished with black in the torrid zone, and was tanned and shrunk by the icy cold ofthe pole ofthe earth'; the Asian people also became 'swarthy' in the sun but did not turn black (ibid., 266-8). Note that 'frizzy, woolly' hair is even worse than simply 'frizzy'. Forster added a long note to explain his theory. The 'Negroes' have frizzy, woolly hair because each hair grows out of a smaller root than is found in other men, and so is finer. Abundant makes it woolly. Ibid., 162. 52 Ibid., 163-4.

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d'Urville, but it could have come from a number of his contemporaries. The history ofthe contrast between Polynesia and Melanesia is not the story of a 19th-century French navigator, but the history of European ideas about 'skin colours', between the 16th and the 19th centuries.

ABSTRACT

Dumont d'Urville has been credited in the popular imagination with inventing a four part division of Oceania: Malaysia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia. In actuality, he was developing and popularis ing names already in existence in the scientific literature. Furthermore, his aim was more to contribute to a 'theory of races' than to add names for the sake of cartography. This paper examines the intellectual climate of the time, and the writers whose formulations were the precursors of the convenient schema, used by Dumont d'Urville and his successors, to attempt to group the varied islands, and clusters of 'the Great Ocean', and to classify their inhabitants, using attributes such as skin colour and type of hair, in relation to the wider human race.

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