The creation of ethnographic collections by European institutions was supported by trade and commerce in the latter part of the nineteenth century. For those states possessing colonies, ethnographic museums were envisaged ‘as a means of understanding the subject peoples and of awakening the interest of the public and of merchants in them – all necessary conditions for lucrative trade. Toward this end ethnology [was] indispensable’.67 The
museums of Berlin, London, Paris and Rome were actively constituted at this time, with ethnological collections developing alongside collections of antiquities. Universal Expositions were staged in Paris (1855, 1878 and 1889) and a Colonial Exposition in London (1886). Mercantile interests were explicit in the establishment of the Lisbon Colonial Museum (1871), which promulgated the commercial agenda of stimulating imperial trade networks by exhibiting goods and products in the museum.68 Objects of technical interest
were displayed as evidence of skill amongst ‘exotic peoples’ and selected based on ethnologists’ interpretations of evolutionary theory and a naturalistic aesthetic.
The alignment of European ethnographic museums in the mid- to late nineteenth century with the political and economic competition for world markets was especially true in Germany. Following unification in 1871, Germany was conscious of the supplementary activity required to advance its commercial ambitions. Germany’s leading contribution lay in identifying a new ‘ethnographic frontier’ and in the cartographic dividing-up of Oceania and determining boundaries between Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. However, ‘[o]ver the course of the nineteenth century, the attempt to identify local ethnic boundaries gave way to a different concern. The … Pacific Ocean provided opportunities to study pristine cultures seemingly unmolested by the increasing Euro-American presence in the region’.69 German-
66 Howes, The Race Question in Oceania, 51–62.
67 Robert Goldwater, “The Development of Ethnological Museums,” in Museum Studies: An Anthology of Context, edited by Bettina Messias Caronell (Malden, USA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2004), 134. 68 Ricardo Roque, “Skulls without Words: The Order of Collections from Macao and Timor, 1879–82,” Journal of History of Science and Technology, vol. 1 (2007): 124.
69 Rainer F Buschmann, Anthropology’s Global Histories: The Ethnographic Frontier in German New Guinea, 1870– 1935 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), 5, 1–11.
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speaking ethnographers contributed to the development of ethnographic collections and museums that were deemed the world’s leading ethnographic institutions in the late nineteenth century.70
German ethnographic museums were established in Berlin (1873), Dresden (1875), Hamburg (1879), Leipzig (circa 1869) and Munich (1862). These cities and museums enjoyed outward- looking, cosmopolitan, ‘worldly’ perspectives, whilst also being provincial and municipally focused. The social life of German museums reflected dynamic regional, national and international interests, together with the ‘intra-German’ competitiveness that characterised the German sciences. This civic competition fostered sponsorship of museums and leading scientists, support for their expeditions, and an enthusiasm to amass collections in a bid to out-do one another.71 Over time this competiveness led to ethnologists shifting focus from
acquisition for the sake of science to ‘possession for possession’s sake’.72
Collaboration between mercantile interests, human scientists and colonialists aimed to secure commercial benefits, with mixed results. A number of commercial companies operating in German colonies became agents for the collection and transportation of ethnographic material from German colonies in Oceania and Africa. German ethnological museum officials and the Imperial Navy also collaborated, with the result that ‘ethnographic frontiers [were tied] firmly with geographic ones’.73 The Prussian Museum Administration supplied
1,000 to 2,000 marks biennially to support ethnographic collecting by the navy for the Royal Museum of Ethnology, Berlin (hereafter RMEB). The activities of Captain Adrian Jacobsen, who collected over 18,000 objects from the Banda Islands for the RMEB, storing them on the Frigga steamer under the control of Kingsin Linie, a Hamburg-based shipping company, illustrate such collaborations.74
70 Penny, Objects of Culture, 1.
71 Penny, Objects of Culture, 10. 72 Penny, Objects of Culture, 7.
73 Buschmann, “Oceanic Carvings and German Cravings,” 306.
74 Elena Soboleva, “A Colecção Timorense Do Museu De Antropologia E Etnografia De S Petersburgo:
Breve Inventário,” Oriente; Revista quadrimestral da Fundação Oriente, no. 7 (2003): 67–68. Over 300 of these objects, of Timorese provenance, were exchanged in 1899 between the Berlin Ethnographic Museum and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, St Petersburg. See Penny, Objects of Culture, 84–88, for details of Jacobsen’s expeditions and his relationship with Bastian and the Berlin Ethnographic Museum. Furthermore, during a voyage aboard the Gazelle, Jacobsen acquired artefacts from Timor Island (Barique, Laga, Laclo, Manatuto, Matinaro and Maubara) in 1888, which remain accessioned in the Royal Museum of Ethnology, Berlin, collection.
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The RMEB was endorsed as a centralised institution (Zentralstelle, G) by the Federal Council (Bundestrat, G) of Germany for the receipt of ethnographic objects acquired from the colonies by returning colonial officials.75 This initiative was instigated by German ethnographer Adolf
Bastian (1826–1905), Director of the RMEB (1873–1905), who greatly influenced late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ethnographic practice and Germanic museum collection development.76
Bastian fostered ‘salvage ethnography’ collecting practices. His doctrine of scarcity, coupled with the imminent disappearance of ‘pure’ indigenous societies and their artefacts, created an urgent agenda for ethnographic collection. It also triggered the possibility of turning artefacts into marketable commodities. Duplicate artefacts, which Bastian purchased as ‘doubles’77 (Dubletten, G), were ‘quickly sold to other collectors and institutions’.78 Circuits of
exchange existed between museums in Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Leiden and St Petersburg as their collections increasingly reflected local, national and imperial identity-building agendas, which extended into the early twentieth century.79
Building on the intellectual lineage of German ethnographers such as Forster and Humboldt, Bastian advocated a ‘psychic unity of mankind’ and the idea that all humans share a basic mental framework.80 He proposed a set of universal characteristics, termed ‘elementary ideas’
(Elementargedanken, G). He asserted that human diversity, affected by geographic and historical variables, gave rise to different elaborations of elementary ideas into ‘folk ideas’ (Völkergedanken, G).81 Ethnographic data enabled the study of the psychological laws of
mental development as revealed in diverse regions and different conditions. The aim of research was not the study of individuals per se, but rather the ‘folk ideas’ or ‘collective mind’ of a particular people or cultural group.
75 Buschmann, “Oceanic Carvings and German Cravings,” 307.
76 Buschmann, “Oceanic Carvings and German Cravings,” 303–307; Penny, Objects of Culture, 18–29. 77 Penny, Objects of Culture, 56.
78 Penny, Objects of Culture, 5.
79 H Glenn Penny, “Fashioning Local Identities in an Age of Nation-Building: Museums, Cosmopolitan
Visions, and Intra-German Competition,” German History, vol. 17, no. 4 (1999): 489–505, 490.
80 This theory formed the basis of Carl Jung’s idea of unconscious collectivism and also informed twentieth-
century structuralism. The work of anthropologist Franz Boas was also influenced by Adolf Bastian.
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Rather than focusing on the Melanesia/Polynesia divide that preoccupied much of the earlier nineteenth-century enquiry into the Pacific82, Bastian focused on Melanesia as a site for
anthropological study. He deemed Polynesia to be of limited interest as it had already been acculturated. Bastian advocated an ethnographic approach based on the identification of
Elementargedanken. His prediction that all indigenous societies were doomed to become
‘infected’ and influenced beyond their original pure state once in contact with external influences motivated salvage ethnography.83 Hence, the collection of artefacts and material
culture following such contact would no longer be appropriate as such cultures were then considered ‘inauthentic’.84
Bastian’s assistant at the RMEB, Felix von Luschan (1854–1924), remained enthralled by the possibility of redefining ethnic borders between Micronesia and Melanesia, conveniently straddled by German possessions and economic interests. When the Hernsheim Company returned to Germany from the Bismarck Archipelago with artefacts, they provided von Luschan with an opportunity to redefine these borders through the analysis of artefacts from Wuvulu and Aua islands.85 He instigated a ‘systematic investigation of the region’ of salvage
ethnography; however, without accurate artefact documentation and provenance, the objects were rendered void of ethnographic value from the museum’s perspective. Luschan claimed the Hernsheim Company conducted the ‘worst pillage in the history of ethnography’.86
Failure to elicit suitable material and data through commercial companies prompted a shift towards more active engagement in the field, with fieldwork becoming more prevalent.87
82 Nicholas Thomas, “The Force of Ethnology: Origins and Significance of the Polynesia/Melanesia
Division,” Current Anthropology, vol. 30, no. 1 (1989): 27–41. This article concludes that the delineation of ethnic sub-divisions, such as Polynesia/Melanesia, served the discipline of ethnology and its preoccupation with human types and racial distributions as part of its quest to establish an evolutionary hierarchy of mankind. According to Buschmann, “Oceanic Carvings and German Cravings,” 301, classifications were initially based on differences between local languages, indigenous reception of Europeans and the assumed treatment of women. Polynesians were attributed by European travellers with having intelligible languages and were generally more hospitable towards Europeans and respectful towards women. Melanesians, by contrast, posed serious linguistic puzzles and were deemed xenophobic and prone to domestic violence.
83 Buschmann, “Oceanic Carvings and German Cravings,” 304–305. As a result of ethnographic research
conducted by Bastian in Polynesia between 1879 and 1880, he formulated a pessimistic outlook for the ethnographic future of this region, observing that ‘disruptive processes of colonization, commercialization, and missionisation’ had corrupted Polynesian cultures.
84 Buschmann, “Oceanic Carvings and German Cravings,” 304. 85 Buschmann, “Oceanic Carvings and German Cravings,” 308.
86 Buschmann, “Oceanic Carvings and German Cravings,” 308. Rainer F Buschmann, ‘Exploring Tensions in
Material Culture: Commercialising Ethnography in German New Guinea, 1870–1904’, in Hunting the Gatherers:
Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s, edited by Michael O’Hanlon and Robert L
Welsch (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), 55–79.
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