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Knowledge and Power: Rumphius’ Ambonese Herbal and Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet as Colonial Contact Zones

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2018

Esther Helena Arens  and
Charlotte Kießling
Esther Helena Arens
Affiliation:
Universität zu Köln, Institut für Niederlandistik, Philosophische Fakultät, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Cologne, Germany. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
Charlotte Kießling
Affiliation:
Universität zu Köln, Institut für Niederlandistik, Philosophische Fakultät, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Cologne, Germany. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

The early modern books on Ambonese natural history by G.E. Rumphius have mostly been analysed for their aesthetic form and scientific content. However, with the concept of contact zones as introduced by M.L. Pratt, these texts can also be read as historical sources about colonialism and slavery in the late seventeenth-century Moluccas. This article explores the traces of colonialism and slavery in Rumphius’ Ambonese Herbal (1740ff.) and the Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet (1705).

Type
Focus: Central Europe and Colonialism
Information
European Review , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 461 - 470
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2018 

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References

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