SCIENCE IN A COLONIAL CONTEXT

PART 2: THE EXPEDITIONS OF H.A. LORENTZ TO NEW GUINEA, 1903-1914

National Archives of the Netherlands

on microfiche

Illustration from the collection, inventory number 25, from Nova Guinea, vol. IX "Birds" by E.D. van Oort, drawing by Ch. Dumont, 1909 (note: the microfiches are black/white)

Background

In 2004 Moran Micropublications started a new series of archival publications on microfiche on the theme of science in a colonial context. The first part consisted of the archive of the “Indies Committee for Scientific Research” (order number MMP112) (in Dutch Indisch Comité voor Wetenschappelijke Onderzoekingen), which organized and sent out many scientific expeditions to various parts of the Indonesian archipelago in the last years of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries. In these years the world’s second largest island, New Guinea, was still largely unknown to the outside. The Dutch, who claimed half the island as part of their East Indies colony, were anxious to explore it for both commercial and scientific reasons and organized a series of expeditions there, among others in 1903, 1907, and 1909-1910. H.A. Lorentz (1871-1944, not to be confused with the Nobel-prize winning Dutch physicist Hendrik A. Lorentz, 1853-1928) participated in the first and led the second two. His personal archive of the three expeditions contains a great deal of correspondence with individuals and institutions in several countries and languages with an index of correspondents in the appendix (Bijlage I, pp.21-26 below); much information on the organization and infrastructure of the expeditions; and of course diaries, field notes, draft reports and other documents concerning the local population and the geography, flora and fauna of the regions explored. Also included are several maps, newspaper clippings and articles and manuscripts of his two major publications in which he recounted the first and third of the expeditions: Eenige maanden onder de papoea’s [Several months among the Papuans] (1905) and Zwarte menschen, witte bergen [Black people, white mountains] (1913, new edition 2005). His archive forms a valuable supplement to that of the Indies Committee.