DONNA C. MEHOS Culture for MEMBERS ONLY

Science & DONNA C DONNA C. MEHOS Culture FOR MEMBERS ONLY . The Amsterdam Zoo Artis in MEHOS the Nineteenth Century Science & DONNA C. MEHOS What role did science play in nineteenth-century Dutch cultural life? Science Culture This fascinating slice-of-cultural-life book unveils the significance of Artis as both a scientific center and the cultural hub of the city. It links exhibits of FOR MEMBERS ONLY exotic animals and colonial artifacts, concerts, scientific research, and social exclusion to the rise of national consciousness among nineteenth-century & Dutch middle classes. The author highlights Dutch society and its efforts to display colonial wealth before it supported what is traditionally seen as high Culture culture. Artis flourished with the help of significant private funding at a time when monumental institutions such as museums and concert halls had yet to appear on the Dutch cultural landscape. Artis was a private institution open to members only that held an unprecedented pride of place in Dutch society. FOR MEMBERS ONLY Donna C. Mehos is a senior researcher at the Technical University of Eindhoven. The Amsterdam Zoo Artis in ISBN 90-5356-739-9 the Nineteenth Century AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS www.aup.nl 9 789053 567395 Amsterdam University Press science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 1 Science and Culture for Members Only science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 2 science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 3 Science and Culture for Members Only The Amsterdam Zoo Artis in the Nineteenth Century Donna C. Mehos science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 4 The publication of this book is made possible by a grant from the M.A.O.C. Gravin van Bylandt Stichting Cover design Studio Jan de Boer bno, Amsterdam Cover illustration Vignette, Jaarboekje van het Zoologisch Genootschap Natur Artis Magistra, Amsterdam: M. Westerman en Zoon, 1852- 1875 Layout PROgrafici, Goes isbn 90 5356 739 9 nur 694 © Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2006 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval sys- tem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photo- copying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 5 For Jaap science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 6 science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 7 Table of Contents Acknowledgments 9 Introduction The Nation and Nature in Middle-Class Culture 11 Chapter 1 Structuring a New Generation’s Scientific Society 21 Chapter 2 Private Science and the Public Interest 35 Chapter 3 Internationalizing Nationalist Science 59 Chapter 4 Science Joins Cultural Life 91 Conclusion Science, Colonial Expansion, and National Identity 125 Appendix: Members of the Artis Board of Directors, 1838-1870 131 Notes 137 List of Illustrations and Color Plates 173 Bibliography 177 Index 201 7 science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 8 science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 9 Acknowledgments When I first proposed the history of Artis as a dissertation subject in the mid-1980s, my ideas generated enthusiasm among some historians and skepticism among others. The value of zoo history as a serious academic topic in the history of science was not yet crystal clear. I commenced research that first appeared in my dissertation and has now crystalized into this book. I trust that this work, and various studies of other zoos that have recently appeared, will convince scholars in many sub-fields of history and the social sciences that zoological gardens provide rich resources that help illuminate science and reveal its cultural meanings. I could not have conducted this research without the valuable and friendly assistance of staff members in the libraries of the University of Amsterdam, the Gemeentelijke Archiefdienst Amsterdam, and the Nation- aal Natuurhistorisch Museum Naturalis in Leiden. I am grateful for their help. It is my pleasure to thank here all of my friends and colleagues – too many to name – who have supported me in more ways than they know. While I was a graduate student, the faculty, staff, and my fellow graduate students of the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania maintained an unusually encouraging and intellec- tually stimulating environment during my years in Philadelphia. When I moved to Amsterdam, the (then) Department of Science and Technology Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam gave me an institutional base for which I am grateful. I was privileged to have participated in their discussion groups and Voortgangsconferenties where drafts of my work were discussed by both department members and outside participants. I thank them for their valuable comments. I am also indebted to the members of the (then) Unit for Mass Spectrometry of Macromolecular Systems at the FOM Insti- tute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam for their technical support, hospitality, and the friendly atmosphere. I am thankful for the 9 science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 10 support I received for my graduate work as a Jacob Javits Fellow of the United States Department of Education. For their valuable comments, I am grateful to my friends and colleagues Olga Amsterdamska, Ellinoor Bergvelt, Hans Buiter, Mila Davids, Janneke Hermans, Henrika Kuklick, Debora J. Meijers, Sarah W. Tracy, and Leila Zenderland who have read various incarnations of some or all of the book’s chapters. In particular, Leslie Carlyle, Jan Hein Furnée, Gene Moore, Jenny Reynaerts, and Judith Scheuler read the penultimate draft and offered their detailed observations which contributed greatly to the final product. Thank you. I appreciate the enthusiasm that many individuals have shown in formal and informal arenas. Florence F.J.M. Pieters, former Librarian of the Artis Library at the University of Amsterdam, has assisted me in my research and in the compilation of illustrations from the day I first walked into the Artis library through the final preparation of this book. I appreciate her unfailing interest. In their own ways, Klaas van Berkel and Ruth Oldenziel contributed to the publication of this book. I am grateful to Johan Schot and the Technical University of Eindhoven for giving me the opportunities both to finish this book and to develop research beyond the zoo. My colleagues at the Eindhoven Technical University, in History, Philosophy and Technology Studies, maintain a pleasant and constructive intellectual environment in which I have completed this work. I would like to thank my family for providing years of love, support, and remarkably dynamic and stimulating interaction. I have also received invaluable help from them in preparing the final manuscript. Costa Boon exercised his precision to assure consistency in my documentation. Nico- laas Boon applied his aesthetic insight to help choose and assemble the illustrations. An expert in creating and manipulating digital images, Jaap Boon improved greatly the quality of my illustrations. His language skills proved invaluable both for naming this work and helping me when I faced difficult Dutch passages. (However, all translations in this book are mine and I take full responsibility for them.) To Jaap, who is committed profes- sionally to his twenty-first century vision of science meeting culture, I ded- icate this book. Donna C. Mehos 10 science and culture for members only science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 11 introduction1 The Nation and Nature in Middle-Class Culture No one can say I don’t live decently with my wife – she is a daughter of Last & Co., coffee brokers – no one can find fault with anything in our marriage. I am a member of “Artis”, she has a shawl which cost ninety-two guilders... – Multatuli, Max Havelaar2 With these words, the fictional Amsterdam coffee broker, Batavus Droogstoppel, positioned himself in decent Dutch society. Portrayed as the caricature of an unfeeling intolerant hypocrite, Droogstoppel represented one segment of Dutch middle-class society in Amsterdam. A trader of colonial wares who married into a respectable family, he also confirmed his identification with polite society by pointing out his membership in the private Zoological Society (Zoologisch Genootschap) Natura Artis Magistra – the Amsterdam zoo. Science, the Zoo, and Middle-Class Culture Clearly, for the Dutch who read Max Havelaar when it appeared in 1860, Artis membership was a recognizable status symbol. Artis emerged as a significant cultural institution devoted to science. It was founded by and for its middle-class members. Historians of the nineteenth century have rarely included zoos or science in their analyses of the rise of bourgeois culture in which art museums and concert halls figure more prominently.3 Yet in the Netherlands, the two Dutch national art museums struggled for both financial support and public recognition in a period when Artis was pros- pering. While public art museums rarely received donations and the art market valued seventeenth-century paintings by Frans Hals or Vermeer in the hun- dreds (rather than thousands or millions) of guilders, Artis regularly received gifts and easily purchased exotic animals at costs comparable to masterpieces. Artis operated with an annual budget that the art museum directors would have considered astronomical. If money talks, these figures tell us that, in the nineteenth century, exotic animals, ethnographica, and natural history at the multi-functional zoological society was much more highly esteemed by Amsterdam’s cultured middle classes than the Rem- 11 science and culture 12-01-2006 11:52 Pagina 12 brandts and Jan Steens that have come to symbolize the nation’s cultural heritage.

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