Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment by Han F. Vermeulen (review)

The author begins his study with three mottos that guided his research on German Enlightenment writers in anthropology: from Francis Bacon, "for knowledge itself is power" (1597); from G.W. Leibniz, "languages are the most ancient monuments of the human species … that serve best for determining the origins of peoples" (1694); and from Samuel Johnson, "languages are the pedigree of nations" (1773). With this bold stroke, the author frames the history of anthropology in documents that anticipate diachronic and synchronic differences in research understood "before [Franz] Boas" (1858–1942) and, we might add, before Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). It is in this context of "big history" where we see the author's argument that the "genesis" of social anthropology began with the methods of German Enlightenment writers like G.F. Müller (1705–1783) and C. Niebuhr (1733–1815), who took expeditions to the north and east of Europe. While others looked west to the "new world," like the Jesuits Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) and J.-F. Lafitau (1681–1746), this volume shows how ethnographic mapping in Siberia and Arabia developed the tools and methods of ethnology basic to modern anthropology.

The author assigns the origins of the "four-fields" approach of Boas and anthropology today—including biology, archeology, linguistics, and ethnology—to the German Enlightenment, when ethnographic reports became an instrument of science. In this period, he found research synchronized for comparison, narrated in factual terminology, and organized into programed topics, all of which was supported with maps and illustrations, and, most importantly, based on field observation. The author shows how ethnography and ethnology helped shift attention on the "other" in people to "all" people, "both within and outside Europe, of all eras" (xiv). He also assigns to the German Enlightenment "a paradigmatic shift" from older studies of "manners and customs" to "the study of languages," especially in explorations by G.F. Müller of "Siberia" and by C. Niebuhr of "Arabia." Then in chapter 6, he shifts focus from the "field," from expeditions, to the "study," to the university; there he finds the "Invention of Ethnology" (269) in the concept of universal history by A.L. Schlözer (1735–1809). In Schlözer, we see the combined learning of a historian and linguist with skills in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Swedish, Gothic, Old Norse, and Russian, although he learned the latter more to service synchronic research in social forms than for linguistic theory (274). This development of university research is instructive, for it shows that Herder, like Vico before him, preserved the integrity of "peoples" in narratives of historical progression, while university writers sought values shared by "all peoples" in reports of standardized information.

Müller serves the author well as a defining moment in the way ethnographic reports became a tool of ethnology; Kant, for example, wrote an anthropology but conducted no field studies. The author lists other criteria that put authenticity into field observation: Müller systematized a program of site studies, organized instructions and methods for students, inspired colleagues to share in the work, and coined a concept for the report called "description of peoples" (Völker-Beschreibung, 132). J. Blumenbach in Göttingen also developed a methodology for field observation but in search of the "natural varieties of mankind" (371). And from these tightly defined standards of the scientific report, the author builds a context with connections to the fieldwork of others, scholars and scientists alike. To this end he closely examines Müller's instruction for collecting information in tables (169–170). Müller limited the information to be collected by number of paragraphs and by sets of prescribed questions: for example, six paragraphs on language (#10–16), eleven on time reckoning (#136–147), and ten on religious representation (#702–712). Both in topical choice and in...