Commerce, colonialism, and the globalization of action in late Enlightenment Germany

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Notes

1. See Kant's announcement of his lecture plan for the year 1765–1766, where he states that his threefold conception of geography (as physical, moral and political geography) is ‘the actual foundation of all history, without which it can be little distinguished from fairy tales’. ‘Immanuel Kants Nachricht von der Einrichtung seiner Vorlesungen in dem Winterhalbenjahre von 1765–1766’, in Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin: Koeniglich-Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, vol. 2, 1902–, p 2.

2. G C Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999, pp 3–4.

3. G C Spivak, Imperative zur Neuerfindung des Planeten/Imperatives to Re-Imagine the Planet, Wien: Passagen, 1999, p 44.

4. Spivak, Imperatives to Re-Imagine the Planet, p 56.

5. Friedrich Schiller, ‘Wilhelm Tell’ [1804], Schiller's Complete Works, Charles J. Hempel (ed.), Philadelphia: Kohler, 1870, Act IV, Scene 3.

6. Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘Journal meiner Reise’, in Sturm und Drang. Dichtungen und theoretische Texte in zwei Bänden, vol. 1, H Nicolai (ed.), München: Winkler, 1971, p 201.

7. ‘We have considered the act of estrangement of practical human activity, of labour, from two aspects: (1) the relationship of the worker to the product of labour as an alien object that has power over him. The relationship is, at the same time, the relationship to the sensuous external world, to natural objects, as an alien world confronting him, in hostile opposition.’ K Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, M Mulligan (trans.), Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1959.

8. Herder, ‘Journal meiner Reise’ p 217.

9. Herder, ‘Journal meiner Reise’ p 219.

10. By the time he writes the Ideas, he is drawing on the latest medical, anthropological and geographical studies of various world regions, such as (to name but a few) S Camper, Kort Berigt wegens de Ontleding van verschiedene Orang-Outangs, Amsterdam, 1780; A Sparrmann, Reisen in Afrika vom Vorgebirge der Guten Hoffnung aus landwärts, zur Erweiterung der Naturgeschichte. Aus dem Schwedischen von Großkurd, Berlin, 1783; E A W Zimmermann, Geographische Gescheichte des Menschen und der allgemein verbreiteten vierfüßigen Tiere, 3 vols, Leipzig, 1778–1783; J Gumilla, Histoire naturelle, civile et géographique de l'Orénoque, 3 vols, Paris and Avignon, 1758; W Robertson, Geschichte von Amerika, 2 vols, J F Schiller (trans.), Leipzig, 1777.

11. Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 2 vols, Berlin: Aufbau, 1965, vol. 1, p 276.

12. Herder, Ideen, vol. 1, p 276–277.

13. Herder, Ideen, vol. 1, p 277.

14. Herder, Ideen, vol. 1, p 277.

15. Herder, Ideen, vol. 1, p 277.

16. Herder, Ideen, vol. 1, pp 278–279.

17. Goethe relied on Johann Christian Hüttner's regular reports from London. Goethe read the reports carefully and used them as the basis for ordering books for the library in Weimar. K S Guthke, Goethes Weimar und ‘Die große Öffnung in die weite Welt’, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, vol. 93, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001. In the years 1814–1829 Hüttner presented concise summaries (Guthke likens them to ‘digests’, p 36) of English writings about the non-European world.

18. Guthke, Goethes Weimar, p 37.

19. Goethe, Faust. Eine Tragödie, Goethe-HA, vol. 3, p 337.

20. Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘On Diligence in the Study of Several Learned Languages’ (1764), Selected Early Works 1764–1767. Addresses, Essays, and Drafts; Fragments on Recent German Literature, E A Menze and K Menges (eds), University Park, Penn.: State University Press, 1992, pp 29–34, p 30.

21. Herder, Ideen, vol. 2, p 42.

22. Herder, Ideen, vol. 2, pp 250–251.

23. Georg Forster, Cook der Entdecker: Schriften über James Cook, Leipzig: Reclam Verlag, 1991, p 16.

24. K S Guthke, ‘Die Entdeckung der Welt um 1800’, Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts, 2003, pp 134–207.

25. Blumenbach formulated some of the founding principles of physical anthropology, proposing in his doctoral dissertation in 1775 a fivefold division of humanity into various races (although, like Herder, he regarded humanity as belonging to a single species, and the notion of race was intended solely as a classificatory tool). J F Blumenbach, De generis humani varietate nativa liber, Gottingae: Vandenhoeck, 1775. This study was written under the supervision of Christian W Büttner (1716–1801), whose reports of travels and discoveries in the far-flung corners of the world proved particularly inspiring to his student. Büttner lived in Weimar in the 1780s, where he was one of Goethe's important interlocutors on matters of scientific theory.

26. Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäft, Güttingen: Dietrich, 1981, pp 12–13, cit. R J Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life. Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp 218–219.

27. For example, in his article on James Cook (1789), Georg Forster uses the term Bildungstrieb to compare the diverse physical constitutions of humans in various climatic regions. Forster, Cook der Entdecker, p 133.

28. Forster, Cook der Entdecker, p 133.

29. In the words of P J Marshall and G Wilhelms, ‘the techniques of the student of nature seemed more appropriate than those of the student of texts’. P J Marshall and G Wilhelms, The Great Map of Mankind. British Perceptions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment, London: Dent, 1982, cit. Guthke, p 155.

30. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. A Tragedy, C T Brooks (trans.), 7th edn, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868, lines 398–408.

31. ‘Mind is not at rest, but much more than that it is absolute unrest, pure activity, the negation or the ideality of all fixed determinations of understanding—not abstractly simple but in its simplicity at the same time a differing of oneself from oneself—not an essence that is complete before its appearance and that resides by itself behind the mountain of appearances, but it is in truth only actual through the determinate forms of its necessary self-revelation—and not (as [rational] psychology believes) a soul-thing in an external relation to the body, but instead it is internally bound to the body through the unity of the concept.’ G W F Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, para. 378, Zusatz, Werke in 20 Bänden, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970, vol. 10, p 11.

32. See Jean-Luc Nancy's commentary on the passage from Hegel's Encyclopaedia quoted in the previous footnote. Jean-Luc Nancy, Hegel. The Restlessness of the Negative, Jason Smith and Steven Miller (trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002, pp 6–7.

33. G W F Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, Werke in 20 Bänden, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970, vol. 15, p 392.

34. F Schlegel, Philosophische Lehrjahre 1796–1806. Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, vol. 13, E B München (ed.), Paderborn, Wien: Schöningh, 1963, p 85.

35. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, in Collected Works, vol. 9, Eric A Blackall (trans.), New York: Suhrkamp, 1983, p 174.

36. Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, p 174.

37. Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, p 165.

38. Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, pp 88–89.

39. Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, p 345.

40. Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, in Collected Works, vol. 10, Krishna Wilson (trans.), 1983, p 364.

41. Herder, Ideen, vol. 2, p 73.

42. Forster, Cook, der Entdecker, p 113.

43. Forster, Cook, der Entdecker, p 201.

44. G W F Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Werke in 20 Bänden, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970, vol. 7, p 391.

45. See E C Eze (ed.), Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997.

46. See Immanuel Kant, ‘Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen’, Werke, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, vol 9, pp 11–30.

47. G Forster, ‘Noch etwas über die Menschenraßen’, Der Teutsche Merkur, October/November, 1786, pp 57–86; pp 150–166, p 62.

48. Forster, ‘Noch etwas’, p 63.

49. ‘I am by no means prepared to answer the question whether there are several original branches of humanity with a decisive yes … at least I cannot consider it incomprehensible or improbable that two distinct branches, and perhaps in each a considerable number of individuals emerged as autochthones in different regions of the world.’ Forster, ‘Noch etwas’, p 161. According to Ulrich Enzensberger, Forster privately shared Sömmering's belief that the Negro is more closely related to apes than to whites (Ulrich Enzensberger, Georg Forster. Ein Leben in Scherben, Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1996, p 158).

50. Forster, ‘Noch etwas’, p 161.

51. F M Barnard, Herder on Nationality, Humanity and History, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003, p 77.

52. See Barnard, Herder on Nationality, p 146.

53. This point is made by S Muthu in Enlightenment against Empire, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, p 253.

54. For example, Ideas, Book 7, Ch. 2: ‘From the dust of all four parts of the world, the ancient biblical tradition tells us, Adam was formed, and he was innervated with the forces and spirits of the wide world. Wherever his sons have ventured and made their homes throughout the millennia, there they took root like trees and gave forth leaves and fruits according to the climate’; Book 10, Ch. 2: ‘God made humans, according to the oldest traditions, in his own image; he made in them an image of God, a man and a woman, the smallest number after the multitude he had created; then he rested and did not create any more.’

55. See H Stolpe, ‘Anmerkungen’, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, vol. 1, Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1965, pp 481–487. According to Stolpe, this position was shared by a number of leading anthropologists and natural historians of the time, including Buffon, Peter Simon Pallas and Eberhardt August Wilhelm Zimmermann (see p 484).

56. Herder, Ideen, vol. 2, p 291.

57. ‘Geographically and climatically, the human race is intended to be a neighbourly cohabiting people, that exchanges not only plague, illness and climatic burdens, but climatic warmth and other benefits.’ Herder, Ideen, vol. 1, p 264.

58. ‘Europe is not worthy of seeing the happiness [of the happy and peaceful nations at the foot of the Mountains of the Moon], since it has sinned unpardonably against this part of the world, and continues to do so. The peacefully trading Arabs move through the land and have founded colonies far and wide.’ Herder, Ideen, vol. 1, p 226. ‘Chinese foreign trade takes place without any enslavement’, while Europeans ‘roam through the whole world as merchants and robbers.’ Herder, Ideen, vol. 2, pp 41–42. See also Herder, Ideen, vol. 2, pp 101, 280.

59. Herder, Ideen, vol. 2, p 225.

60. As he puts it, ‘the barbarian rules, those who are educated enough to prevail in turn educate others [der gebildete Überwinder bildet]’. Herder, Ideen, vol. 2, p 291. Similarly, Carthage is condemned because it was ‘not interested in spreading humanity, but in collecting treasures’. Herder, Ideen, vol. 2, p 77.

61. Herder, Ideen, vol. 2, p 75.

62. Herder, Ideen, vol. 1, pp 286, 287.

63. Herder, Ideen, vol. 2, pp 36–37.

64. Herder, Ideen, vol. 1, p 280.

65. Novalis, Schriften; die Werke Friedrich von Hardenbergs, Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel (eds), 5 vols, Stuttgart: W Kohlhammer, 1960–1975, vol. 3, p 646.

66. Karl Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte vom Jahre 1844, Leipzig: Reclam, 1988, p 137.

67. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, p 177.