Who did all the Work?
An Introduction to the Project
The classic scientific explorer, a renegade hero, braving the untamed jungles with nothing but a machete and a logbook, is a powerful figure in the imagination of the history of science. He’d delve into dark caves with a torch made from scraps, catalog the hundreds of plants and animals hitherto unknown to science, and make daring discoveries in the darkest reaches of unexplored territory. Although a certain romanticism of this imagined character is hard to deny, historians of science are turning away from this caricature of western masculinity, and now focus on the invisible and indigenous labor that made these expeditions possible. An important research question now is: who? Who guided the scientists through the land, who collected and prepared zoological or geological samples, who offered insights unknown to the visiting westerners? In short: Who did all the Work?
This project team’s contribution to the field will be a Nodegoat database of non-western actors involved in the field work and expeditions in the Dutch East Indies (1890–1962). The Dutch East Indies were frequently subject to scientific travel of European (and often American and German) scientists. The focus on fieldwork necessitates a certain selection of scientific disciplines. Members of the research team have focussed, broadly speaking, on three categories of science. Sjoerd Kompier has looked at anthropological sciences. Henrike Vellinga worked on the natural sciences, such as botany and zoology. I joined the project as a research intern, and had the chance to experiment with a small foray into the earth sciences; volcanology, physical geography, and vertebrate paleontology.
The aim of the database is ultimately to serve as a tool for researchers interested in invisible labor and colonial science. The core building blocks of the database are the names, ethnicities, places of origins, roles within the expedition, and function of the individual in their society. Finding these can be a challenge, and is wildly variable depending on the personality of the scientist recording their travels, the genre of the primary source, and the scientific discipline. The main source we used were expedition logs and research publications, the best of which contain a day-to-day recording of events. Often this includes details about what was eaten, how many laborers were hired, the location of the night camp, and other such logistic details. Sometimes, however, a nugget of gold is found hidden here. The discovery of a zoological sample, the preparation of a geological sample, the detailed sharing of cultural knowledge; some piece of scientific knowledge is “discovered” by the scientist through the efforts of an indigenous actor. With luck, their names, place of origins, and overall function are listed in the source.
When dealing with our colonial past, certain sensitivities need to be taken into account. Colonial scientific publications are rife with colonial language, some of which we have no real workaround to avoid (such as names of ethnic groups). In other cases, we are able to aggregate and standardize categories (such as roles and functions). At all times, we need to remain aware of the colonial violence that made this science production possible. Some expeditions, such as the geological surveys of Celebes (now Sulawesi) under the Sarasin cousins, directly led to the assimilation of the island into Dutch colonial rule. Others, such as Eugene Dubois’ excavations, employed forced prison labor. This reality, I think, makes it all the more important to know who we are really talking about when we ask: Who did all the Work?
By Thomas Niederer