The Contribution of H.O. Forbes to Indonesian Ethnography: A Biographical and Bibliographical Note - article ; n°1 ; vol.16, pg 135-159

Roy F.Ellen

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Archipel - Année 1978 - Volume 16 - Numéro 1 - Pages 135-159
25 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: ARCHIPEL0
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1978
• Nombre de lectures: 12
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

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Roy F. Ellen
The Contribution of H.O. Forbes to Indonesian Ethnography: A
Biographical and Bibliographical Note
In: Archipel. Volume 16, 1978. pp. 135-159.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Ellen Roy F. The Contribution of H.O. Forbes to Indonesian Ethnography: A Biographical and Bibliographical Note. In: Archipel.
Volume 16, 1978. pp. 135-159.
doi : 10.3406/arch.1978.2525
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/arch_0044-8613_1978_num_16_1_2525135
THE CONTRIBUTION OF H.O. FORBES TO INDONESIAN
ETHNOGRAPHY : A BIOGRAPHICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
NOTE C1)
by Roy F. ELLEN,
I
It has recently become fashionable to resurrect previously obscure
nineteenth century anthropologists. No doubt the fascination is comp
arable to the literary specialist's interest in minor poets and novelists
and that of the theologian in minor prophets. Needham has reminded
us of the significance of the work of individuals such as Staniland Wake
and complained of their frequent relegation to unnoticed positions in
contemporary directories (2). It is not difficult to raise objections to
this concern to 'correct the record', to castigate it as a rather idle intellec
tual pursuit (3). Indeed, perhaps too much attention altogether has been
paid to the role of individual contributors to the development of anthro
pological thought. But there is an important point here ; that minor
anthropologists — 'minor* in the sense that their contributions were not
(!) This paper first began to take shape in 1968 during researches into the older
literature on the Moluccas. A number of individuals have been helpful in
providing information and ideas : Christine Kelly of the Royal Geographical
Society, Miss P.I. Edwards and Mrs. A. Datta of the British Museum (Natural
History), Colin A. McLaren of the Aberdeen University Library, James Ritchie
of the National Library of Scotland, Miss G.M. Grainger of the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew, Charles Hunt of the City of Liverpool Museums, Miss B.
Kirfcpatrick of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Dr. E.W. Dawson of the
New Zealand Océanographie Institute, and my colleague Anthony Milner.
(2) Needham 1967, 1975; 1970a: xiv.
(3) McLeod 1975. 136
influencial for one reason or another — were part of the context in
which their 'major' contemporaries worked. The heavyweights of the
subject, then as now, drew considerably on, the knowledge and ideas
of their lesser colleagues, sometimes to the extent that the distinction
between the two becomes a totally arbitrary one, determined by
differential social selection rather than any objective assessment of
the scientific value of their work. Often what is important is quantity
of output, relative accessibility and social acceptability.
Henry Ogg Forbes was not a theorist like Wake, except in the
most minimal sense that any recorder of data must possess some kind
of theoretical framework; he was a contributor to ethnographic and
geographical knowledge, and a rather second rank one at that.
Nevertheless, his work is referred to in regional gazetteers, accounts
of early work in Indonesian archipelago and in checklists of
sources (4). Admittedly these have generally taken the form of histo
rical footnotes, parenthetical comments or introductory remarks; but
simply through repeated citation his name has become accepted as a
noteworthy pioneer one. However, there has never been even a
preliminary published assessment of his work as ethnographic source
material for the localities he visited during the seventies and eighties
of the last century.
The importance of the critical evaluation of documentary materials
used in anthropological analyses has recently been the subject of some
discussion (5) , although it was recognized much earlier by E. B. Tylor,
Andrew Lang and Fritz Graebner (6). This note is much more limited
in intent. Its aims are twofold :
1. to document the ethnographic work of Forbes in context, and
2. comment briefly and provisionally on its value as source
material for contemporary anthropology, historiography and the
history of geographical discovery.
It also brings together for the first time some biographical data
and presents as complete as possible a bibliography of his ethnographic
and related writings (7).
(4) E.g. Bastin 1965, Koentjaraningrat 1967 : 2, Lebar 1972.
(5) Evans-Pritchard 1962 (1961): 50, 1971; Needham 1970: 40-1, Haekel 1973.
(«) Urry 1973: 47, Graebner 1911, following Bernheim 1908. See also Koppers
1939: 70ff.
(7) I am not competent to judge the status of his non-ethnographic work. He was
evidently primarily a collector and descriptive natural historian (Dawson n.d.),
and was apparently regarded as being of sufficient importance to be included
in a volume on science in the Netherlands East Indies edited by Honig and
Verdoorn (1945). His obituaries are respectful rather than enthusiastic. However,
his name does not figure in any of the major scientific directories. 137
II
The details of the private and even public life of Henry Ogg
Forbes are fragmentary and difficult to obtain: an adequate biography
still remains to be written (8). He was iborn at Drumblade, near
Huntly, Aberdeenshire, on 30th January 1851, the second son of
Alexander Forbes (1821-1897), minister of the Free Church at
Drumblade and Master of Arts from Marischal College and the Uni
versity of Aberdeen. The young Forbes was educated at Aberdeen
Grammar School and at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
He was an Alumnus at the former university from 1869 to 1871, but
did not graduate until awarded the honorary degree of LL.D. in
1894 (9). He had originally planned a career in the medical profession,
but was forced to abandon this on losing an eye shortly before he was
due to qualify (10).
Forbes took an early interest in a number of diverse fields of
natural history, and a European field trip took him to Portugal
(1875-7) (n). In 1878 he embarked on the five year visit to the Indo
nesian archipelago which is our central concern here. In 1881 he
married Annabella, daughter of William Keith of Aberdeen, in
Buitenzorg, and on the completion of his A Naturalist's Wanderings
in the Eastern Archipelago (hereafter called the Wanderings) Forbes
set out again, this time to explore the interior of New Guinea, where
he remained for three years (12) . Following this he went to New
Zealand where in 1890 he became director of the Canterbury Museum,
returning to England in 1893 to take up the directorship of what was
then the University (Mayer) Museums. Liverpool. Here he founded
and edited the Bulletin of the Liverpool Museums from 1897 to 1901,
when it ceased publication. During this time he also produced his only
two other major publications: A hand-book to the PHmates (1896-7)
and The Natural History of Sokotra and Abd-al-Kuri. Most of his
(8) Dr. Dawson has in fact been engaged on this onerous task for some years.
The Forbes personal papers appear to have been destroyed on his death, and
diaries of his New Guinea travels which it is believed he brought with him to
New Zealand have, like most of his other manuscripts, never been located. Some
material is now deposited in the National Library of Scotland, the Royal
Geographical Society in London, the General, Zoology and Botany libraries of
the British Museum (Natural History) and the library of the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew.
(9) McLaren (pers. conun. 1975).
(«>) Slater 1933a.
(") Forbes 1871, 1872, 1877, 1877a, 1877b, 1878.
(12) 1886, 1891a. 138
other work appeared as a large number of exceedingly brief com
munications in learned journals. From 1905 he also held a university
lectureship in ethnology and on his resignation from the Liverpool
post in 1911 he remained consulting director. Between 1911 and 1913
he visited South America at the invitation of the Peruvian government
where he reported on the birds and industry of Guano Island (13).
He died at Selsey, Sussex, on 27th October 1932 at the age of eighty-
one, after a long period of bad health and a secluded retirement in
the south of England.
Like many amateur ethnographers of his time, Forbes's primary
interest was in the natural sciences. He was trained as a natural
historian, most of his published work belongs to this field, and it was
here that he built up a modest but creditable reputation. He was
clearly something of a polymath, a naturalist in the broadest sense of
the term; writing articles and notes on topics as diverse as the birds
of northwest Aberdeenshire, hydroid zoophytes, orchids, earthquakes,
fire-balls, sound-producing ants, bell-clappers, floating pumice, moas,
guano, the audibility of thunder and 'The topography of Caesar's last
campaign against the Bellovaci' (14). One of his obituarists describes
him as that 'indefatigable explorer and! naturalist1 (15). He was a fellow
of the Zoological Society of London and of the Ornithologist's Union;
a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society from 1883 (on whose
council he served from 1917 to 1927) and recipient of its Gill memorial
award in 1893, a member of the Scottish Geographical Soc