Geographies of Difference: Dutch Physical Anthropology in the Colonies and the Netherlands, ca. 1900-1940

Abstract

This article analyses how physical anthropologists created scientific circuits between the Netherlands and their colonies in the East Indies. It shows that national and imperial anthropology were not two separate spheres and that the movement of anthropologists and their objects was important both for the making of anthropology as a scientific discipline and for making anthropological ideas. Trying to define the physical features of people in Dutch fishing villages and in East Indies inland regions, anthropologists formed geographies of imaginary difference. Anthropological data from the Indies however was valued more highly than that from the Netherlands, which means that distance continued to matter. New Imperial Historians would therefore do better to sharpen their perception of these uneven geographies.

Touch in anthropometry: Enacting race in Dutch New Guinea 1903–1909

“…8 The outspoken difference in contact with the Papuan people accounts for the huge difference in the quality and quantity of anthropometric data Van der Sande and Von Römer brought home. Other historians of the anthropometry of living people have noted similar differences caused by circumstances surrounding contact (Schüttpelz 2005;Sysling 2013). Van der Sande stayed in Metu Debi at Lake Sentani for about six weeks and submitted a meticulously detailed report on his anthropometrical findings, to which I will return below.…”

“…Recently, the history of racial anthropometry in Oceania has attracted increased attention and started to include both practicalities in the field and the actorship of the people measured (Douglas andBallard 2008, 2012;Howes 2013;Roque 2010;Schüttpelz 2005;Sysling 2013;Sibeud 2012). Anthropometric photography has also been studied in depth (Edwards 1992(Edwards , 2006(Edwards , 2014Morris-Reich 2016).…”

A Colonial‐Scientific Interface: The Construction, Viewing, and Circulation of Faces via a 1906 German Racial Atlas

“…The fact that Hagen did not measure the faces of the two Papuans living in Bogadjim—in contrast to all the other portraits in the facial atlas—suggests that he encountered resistance from people who were not under his power as plantation physician. In the Dutch East Indies, European control over or negotiation with measured subjects was necessary in relation to anthropometrical practices (Sysling 2013). Furthermore, those who escaped indentured labor considered the taking of such measurements as an indication of slavery.…”

Dutch scientists and the UNESCO Statement on Race

“…The Netherlands had a long tradition of research on race, and the 1930s had been an especially fruitful decade in that respect, both in its homeland on the North Sea and in its colonies. 25 Much of this research was data collection without reflection on the role of race in science and politics, and there was definitely an awareness of developments in Nazi Germany (although not as much as one might have expected in hindsight). 26 Scientists were keen to point out that there was a difference between the science and its political consequences in Germany.…”