Foreign Bodies Oceania and the Science of Race 1750-1940

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Foreign Bodies Oceania and the Science of Race 1750-1940 Foreign Bodies Oceania and the Science of Race 1750-1940 Foreign Bodies Oceania and the Science of Race 1750-1940 Edited by Bronwen Douglas and Chris Ballard Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: anuepress@anu.edu.au This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/foreign_bodies_citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Foreign bodies : Oceania and the science of race 1750-1940 / editors: Bronwen Douglas, Chris Ballard. ISBN: 9781921313998 (pbk.) 9781921536007 (online) Notes: Bibliography. Subjects: Ethnic relations. Race--Social aspects. Oceania--Race relations. Other Authors/Contributors: Douglas, Bronwen. Ballard, Chris, 1963- Dewey Number: 305.800995 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design by Noel Wendtman. Printed by University Printing Services, ANU This edition © 2008 ANU E Press For Charles, Kirsty, Allie, and Andrew and For Mem, Tessa, and Sebastian Table of Contents Figures ix Preface xi Editors’ Biographies xv Contributors xvii Acknowledgements xix Introduction Foreign Bodies in Oceania 3 Bronwen Douglas Part One – Emergence: Thinking the Science of Race, 1750-1880 Chapter 1. Climate to Crania: science and the racialization of human 33 difference Bronwen Douglas Part Two – Experience: the Science of Race and Oceania, 1750-1869 Chapter 2. ‘Novus Orbis Australis’: Oceania in the science of race, 1750-1850 99 Bronwen Douglas Chapter 3. ‘Oceanic Negroes’: British anthropology of Papuans, 1820-1869 157 Chris Ballard Part Three – Consolidation: the Science of Race and Aboriginal Australians, 1860-1885 Chapter 4. British Anthropological Thought in Colonial Practice: 205 the appropriation of Indigenous Australian bodies, 1860-1880 Paul Turnbull Chapter 5. ‘Three Living Australians’ and the Société d’Anthropologie 229 de Paris, 1885 Stephanie Anderson Part Four – Complicity and Challenge: the Science of Race and Evangelical Humanism, 1800-1930 Chapter 6. The ‘Faculty of Faith’: Evangelical missionaries, social 259 anthropologists, and the claim for human unity in the 19th century Helen Gardner Chapter 7. ‘White Man’s Burden’, ‘White Man’s Privilege’: Christian 283 humanism and racial determinism in Oceania, 1890-1930 Christine Weir vii Foreign Bodies Part Five – Zenith: Colonial Contradictions and the Chimera of Racial Purity, 1920-1940 Chapter 8. The Half-Caste in Australia, New Zealand, and Western 307 Samoa between the Wars: different problem, different places? Vicki Luker Epilogue The Cultivation of Difference in Oceania 339 Chris Ballard Index 345 viii Figures Front cover Adrien-Hubert Brué, ©Océanie ou cinquième partie du monde comprenant l©Archipel d©Asie, l©Australasie, la Polynésie, &.a ¼ 1814©. In Grand atlas universal ¼, carte 36 (2nd edition, Paris: Desray 1816). Engraving. Antoine Maurin after Louis-Auguste de Sainson, ©Nlle. Irlande: 1. Habitant de Tonga;¼ 4. Habitant du Havre Carteret©; ©Moluques. 1. César, jeune papou de Gilolo©. In Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d©Urville, Voyage de la corvette l©Astrolabe exécuté pendant les années 1826-1827-1828-1829 ¼ Atlas historique, pls 114, 129 (Paris: J. Tastu, 1833). Lithographs. Introduction 1. Adrien-Hubert Brué, ©Océanie ou cinquième partie du monde comprenant l©Archipel d©Asie, l©Australasie, la Polynésie, &.a ¼ 1814©. Engraving. 2. Ambroise Tardieu, ©Carte pour l©intelligence du mémoire de M. le capitaine d©Urville sur les îles du grand océan (Océanie)© (1832). Engraving. 3. Charles V. Monin, Océanie: divisions de l©Océanie (1834). Engraving. Part 1 Emergence: thinking the science of race, 1750-1880 4. Anon., ©Crania collectionis meae quina selectissima adumbrat, ad totidem generis humani varietatum principalium diversitatem demonstrandam: 1. Tungusae; 2. Caribaei; 3. Feminae juvenis Georgianae; 4. O-taheitae; 5. Aethiopissae Guineensis© (1795). Engraving. 5. [Alphonse] Vien, ©Le craniographe de M. Broca© (1860-3). Engraving. Part 2 Experience: the science of race and Oceania, 1750-1869 6. Anon., ©Développement du dynamomètre de Citen. Regnier© (1798). Engraving. 7. Jean Louis Denis Coutant after Antoine Chazal, ©Crânes de Papous© (1824). Engraving. 8. Jules-Louis Le Jeune, ©Papou de L©Ile Bougainville Bouca© [1823]. Pen and wash drawing. 9. Jules-Louis Le Jeune, ©Nlle Irlande© [1823]. Pen and wash drawing. 10. [J.-B.?] Léveillé after photograph by [Louis-Auguste?] Bisson of Pierre-Marie Alexandre Dumoutier, ©Ma-Pou-Ma-Hanga. Native de l©Ile de Manga-Réva, Archipel Gambier (Polynésie)© (1846). Lithographed photograph of plaster bust.. 11. [J.-B.?] Léveillé after photograph by [Louis-Auguste?] Bisson of Pierre-Marie Alexandre Dumoutier, ©Guenney. Natif de Port-Sorelle, (Comté de Dévon), ix Foreign Bodies Côte-Nord de la terre de Van Diemen (Mélanésie)© (1846). Lithographed photograph of plaster bust. 12. Jules-Louis Le Jeune, ©Habitants du Port Dori. Nouvelle Guinée© [1823]. Pen and wash drawing. 13. George Windsor Earl, ©Seats of the Papuan Race in the Indian Archipelago© (1853). Engraving. 14. W.H. Lizars, ©A Papua or Negro of the Indian Islands; Kătut a Native of Bali one of the Brown complexioned Race© (1820). Engraving. 15. William Daniell, ©A Papuan or Native of New Guinea 10 years old© (1817). Aquatint. 16. Alfred Russel Wallace, ©Physical Map of the Malay Archipelago ¼ 1868©. Engraving. Part 3 Consolidation: the science of race and Aboriginal Australians, 1860-1885 17. Anon. after Prince Roland Bonaparte, ©Jenny© (1885). Engraved photographs. Part 4 Complicity and Challenge: the science of race and Evangelical humanism, 1800-1930 18. Anon., ©Our Two Mandates© (1921). Poster. Part 5 Zenith: colonial contradictions and the chimera of racial purity, 1920-1940 19. Anon., ©Michael Leahy in the Wahgi Valley, 1934©. Photograph. 20. Robin Anderson, ©Clem Leahy and his Mother, Yamka Amp Wenta, 1983©. Photograph. 21. Anon., ©Samoan Patriots© (1929). Photograph. Back cover ©Céphalomètre du Dr. Dumoutier, construit par Mr. Gravet, ingénieur mécanicien du Dépôt des Cartes et Plans de la Marine Nationale d©après les indications de l©auteur©. In [Pierre-Marie Alexandre Dumoutier], Voyage au pôle sud et dans l©Océanie ¼ pendant les années 1837-1838-1839-1840 ¼ Atlas anthropologique, pl. 48 (Paris: Gide, 1846). Engraving. x Preface This book had its distant genesis in the editors© discovery nearly a decade ago that we shared intellectual interests in early European encounters with indigenous people in the Pacific Islands (Douglas) and in Papua New Guinea and the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua, then Irian Jaya (Ballard). Significantly, we found that we also shared a then somewhat inchoate sense of the need to go beyond empirical, utilitarian readings of representations of such encounters to take serious account of the ideas and discourses which informed them. The idea of race inevitably loomed large in any such investigation but our approach to its history was deeply inflected by our own experience and present orientations. One of us, an enthusiastic demonstrator for antiracist and anticolonial causes in the 1960s and 70s, could hardly utter the word except in verbalized quotation marks. The other, an experienced fieldworker, was disturbed by the hydra-headed tenacity of the euphemized racial attitudes he consistently encountered: amongst Australian ex-colonizers and postcolonial Indonesian neo-colonizers and in indigenous strategies of identity and resistance. Gripped by the triple imperative to throw past light on ambiguous present usages, to dereify the concept of race, and to keep encounters and local agency at the forefront of analysis, we organized a pair of exploratory workshops on racial science in Oceania. They were held in 2000 and 2001 at The Australian National University with generous funding from the Humanities Research Centre and the Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Most of the contributors to this collection gave work-in-progress papers at one or both workshops. At that time, however, the editors© primary research commitments were to other projects. Then illness (in Douglas©s case) and children (in Ballard©s case) supervened to keep our work on race on the back burner until 2006 when the award of an Australian Research Council Discovery grant enabled us to launch a team project on ©European Naturalists and the Constitution of Human Difference in Oceania: Crosscultural Encounters and the Science of Race, 1768-1888©. This book is the first major outcome of that project. The hiatus between its conception and completion was primarily a result of the editors© realization that a thorough historical understanding of the complex intersections of racial ideas and regional praxis requires more than a general grasp of imperial and colonial discourses on ©the savage©; that we needed to immerse ourselves in contemporary theoretical writings as well as in the accounts of European voyagers and fieldworkers. The ultimate shape of the volume, then, testifies to the lengthy, detailed programs of research we have undertaken on the natural history of man, the history of anthropology and ethnology, and the science of race, in addition to our ongoing work on specifically Oceanic materials. xi Foreign Bodies The collection investigates the reciprocal significance of Oceania for the science
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