A Russian in Malaya

Abstract

This article presents a critical overview of the newly translated diary of Russian anthropologist Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay's expedition to the Malay Peninsula (November 1874 – October 1875) to study its indigenous peoples, today known as Orang Asli. A scholar who was at the forefront of modern anthropological practice, Maclay spent long periods of time in the field and his expeditions to New Guinea, Australia and Melanesia are well known in the history of anthropology. However, his travels in the Malay Peninsula remain poorly understood and little studied. An analysis here of the new translation and annotation of the diary, highlights its contribution to racial theories of the region. Maclay's theory of a ‘Melanesian’ or ‘Papuan’ element in Malaya's indigenous people was one of the main developments in racial theorising of the people of the Malay Peninsula before the advent of anthropologist W.W. Skeat's tripartite racial classification at the turn of the 20th century. Maclay's linking of Malaya's indigenous peoples to Oceania attests to the malleability of boundaries and borders of the area today called the Malay archipelago and how it was once commonly seen as part of the greater Oceanic world prior to the late 19th century. This article presents excerpts from the diary that illustrate this major theme while framing the material within the history of anthropology of Orang Asli and of colonialism in the area.

Keywords:

• anthropology
• Malay Peninsula
• Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay
• racial science
• Orang Asli

Notes

^*The final translation of Maclay's diaries of his time in the Malay Peninsula (November 1874–October 1875) is the result of the work of many academics. In no particular order, Govor and Manickam, Mimi and Charles Sentinella, Natalia Kuklina, Raphael Kabo and Chris Ballard were all involved at various stages of the project and supported the final compilation of the diary with annotations. The research reported here has been generously supported by ARC Discovery grants DP0665356 ‘European Naturalists and the Constitution of Human Difference in Oceania: Crosscultural Encounters and the Science of Race, 1768–1888’ and DP110104578 ‘The Original Field Anthropologist: Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay in Oceania, 1871–1883’. We would also like to acknowledge assistance from the University of Frankfurt Junior Professorship Appointment Fund for the translation of the diary and for providing for additional editing and research by Vicki Low, Jennifer Noto Siswo and Kim Wehner. The final translation is based on the text in Maclay's Collected works, published in the 1950s (Miklukho-Maklai 1950–1954, II: 116–201, 230–6), hereafter referred to as old Collected works (OCW). This publication was heavily edited and had numerous textual differences in comparison with the original manuscript, which is now available in the new Collected works (Miklukho-Maklai 1990–1999, II: 5–67, 81–91) hereafter NCW. A publication of the full journal and scholarly commentaries on its contents is planned for 2015. Lastly, the authors would like to thank Christina Skott and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

¹In this article, we will use Maclay, the second part of his name, in reference to the explorer, while keeping the original spelling of his names as stated in respective publications.

²Melanesia typically refers to the area from New Caledonia to the Admiralty Islands in the Pacific. See Figure 2.

³See Martin Müller (2014) in this special issue of Indonesia and the Malay World 42 (123).

⁴In this special issue of Indonesia and the Malay World 42 (123).

⁵The excerpts are taken from longer diary entries written by Maclay. Where a place is mentioned in the entry, it is inserted at the beginning of the excerpt for clarity. The places are marked on the accompanying Figure 1 in cases where the authors were able to locate them. The spelling of certain place names and words in Malay have been changed to reflect the modern spelling.

⁶‘Jungle people’, often used as a synonym for indigenous or tribal peoples.

Additional information

Author biography

Elena Govor is Research Fellow at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on cross-cultural contacts between Russians and peoples of the Pacific and Australia, which she has examined in a range of publications including Twelve days at Nuku Hiva: Russian encounters and mutiny in the South Pacific (University of Hawaii Press, 2010). She is currently working on the ARC funded grant ‘The original field anthropologist: Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay in Oceania’.

Sandra Khor Manickam is Junior Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her areas of research include the colonial history of Malaya, the history of anthropology, and ideas of race through time.