Abstract
This work is a book review considering the title Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment by Han F. Vermeulen.
Highlights
Before Boas is a very engaging and extensive research study that seeks to unravel the intellectual lineage of two of the most important components of anthropology—ethnology and ethnography—during the early German Enlightenment
He argues that ethnology and ethnography developed in the German Enlightenment, long before these studies were established in other parts of Europe and America (xiii), with significant fieldwork being done as early as the 1730s
As the fifth and sixth chapter illustrate, the terminology used in these field methods was adopted in the works of academic historians like Schlözer and Kollár, which promoted the academic growth of ethnology and ethnography
Summary
He argues that ethnology and ethnography developed in the German Enlightenment, long before these studies were established in other parts of Europe and America (xiii), with significant fieldwork being done as early as the 1730s. His investigation locates the roots of these disciplines not in the works of eighteenth century philosophers such as Kant and Herder, or naturalists like Linneaus and Buffon, but some German speaking enlightenment historians like Gerhard Friedrich Müller (1705-1783), August Ludwig Schlözer (1735-1809), and Adam Frantisek Kollár (1718-1783), who studied diversity of peoples and nations, which is better understood as “multiethnicity,” rather than alterity or culture.
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