Reviewed by: Jacques de Morgan's Explorations in the Malay Peninsula, 1884 ed. by Andrée Jaunay Kirk Endicott Jacques de Morgan's Explorations in the Malay Peninsula, 1884. Edited by Andrée Jaunay, with contributions by Christine Lorre, Antonio J. Guerreiro, and Antoine Verney. Kuala Lumpur: Monograph 51, Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2020. 254 pp, ISBN 978-967-9948-78-3 In early 1884, Jacques de Morgan, a 26-year-old French mining engineer, went to Malaya to look into the possibility of setting up a tin mining enterprise for a group of French businessmen. He concentrated his exploration in Perak state, where several Chinese- and Malay-run tin mines already existed. After three months of exploration (April through June), he found a promising location in the Kinta valley and made preliminary preparations for setting up a mining operation. He approached Frank Swettenham, the Acting British Resident of Perak, and applied for a mining concession, but Swettenham granted him only half the size he wanted. However, Morgan, learning that Swettenham wanted a topographic map of the then-uncharted interior of the state, offered to produce such a map if Swettenham would double the size of the concession, an offer Swettenham readily accepted. Morgan eventually produced the map, which included the major mountains, rivers and watersheds. When he returned to France, he found that his business associates had abandoned the mining venture, and the proposed mine was never established. In later years, Morgan carried out mineral prospecting expeditions in Armenia, archaeological research in the Caucasus and Persia and he served as Director General of Antiquities in Egypt. He never returned to Malaya, but his maps and journal from 1884 remain as invaluable records of 19th century Malaya. This book combines an English translation of Morgan's detailed journals of his mapping expedition (16 July to 4 September 1884) with excerpts from his later scholarly articles, including his findings on the cultures of the indigenous peoples he met (now termed Orang Asli, Malay for "original people"), the mining methods of the Chinese and Malays, and the soils, minerals, plants and even the molluscs he encountered. Morgan's journal reveals him to have been an amazingly knowledgeable, skilled, energetic, motivated, and self-disciplined person. His Malay porters nicknamed him 'strong man'. Early on, his crew included 22 Malay porters and potential guards, a Malay guide, a young French assistant from Province Wellesley (Emile Hardouin), a Chinese cook, and an Indian servant, and later added two elephants and up to 33 indigenous porters and guides. It ended with a few porters, almost no food, his malaria-stricken assistant being carried, and Morgan struggling along on infected legs and bare feet after his shoes rotted away. His procedure was to climb the nearest hill or mountain, clear any obstructing vegetation at the summit and take readings of the elevation and the direction of all other visible mountains. His group then marched on to the next significant mountain and repeated the process. As they hiked along rivers and across ridges between valleys, he plotted [End Page 201] the twists and turns of the rivers on his preliminary maps. In his spare moments, he drew pencil drawings and collected plant, mineral and mollusc specimens. His group spent nights in the houses of indigenous peoples whenever possible, but they sometimes found themselves having to sleep in make-shift leaf shelters in the forest, often in pouring rain. When staying in settlements, he spent time learning all he could about the local people. Morgan began as a mining engineer with broad interests in natural history, and he became a skilled ethnographer as he went along. During his preliminary search for a mine site, he studied the Malay language, the regional lingua franca, and, with some help from Hardouin, he could communicate with Malays, Chinese and many indigenous people. He was able to find some Malay-speakers in all but the most remote indigenous communities. He took special interest in the indigenes and recorded details of their groupings, histories, and ways of life. Unlike most Malays and Europeans of the time, he did not regard them as social inferiors or subhuman savages. He treated them...
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Sep 8, 2023
David Barasa 
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