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The Race Question in OceaniaA. B. Meyer and Otto Finsch between metropolitan theory and field experience, 18651914
Author(s): Hilary Howes
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Peter Lang AG, Switzerland
Imprint: Peter Lang AG
ISBN-13: 9783631638743, 978-3631638743
Synopsis
In 1873 the German naturalist [url] Meyer spent five months in New Guinea. He had expected bloodthirsty and untamed savages and was amazed to find men of milder customs. His compatriot Otto Finsch returned from a voyage through Hawaii, Micronesia, New Zealand and Torres Strait declaring Germanys most respected anthropologists wrong. Human races could not be neatly distinguished: they merge into one another to such an extent that the difference between Europeans and Papuans becomes completely unimportant. This richly interdisciplinary book explores the transformative impacts of personal encounters in Oceania on understandings of human difference, and illuminates the difficult relationship between field experience and metropolitan science in late nineteenth-century Europe.