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Engelhard Weigl
Acclimatization: The Schomburgk brothers in South Australia
Chapter 1
„So new to the world is the subject of acclimatisation, as now understood, that it has little literature, and the advocates of it little experience.“
George William Francis: The Acclimatisation of Harmless, Useful, Interesting, and Ornamental, Animals and Plants. Adelaide 1862.
Alexander von Humboldt had always been fond of the Schomburgk brothers. He had backed Robert Hermann’s journey to Guayana from 1835 to 1839 and had later written the preface to his travel journal.[1] Otto, who in 1839 had been arrested for his political activities, was soon freed again after Humboldt had intervened at the Prussian court. With a letter of recommendation Humboldt had also supported the publication of a travel journal written by Richard Schomburgk, who had accompanied his brother Robert Hermann on a journey to British Guayana from 1840 to 1844.[2] And finally, Humboldt and his friend, the geologist Leopold von Buch, had helped to secure financial backing for the costly voyage to Australia of two of the Schomburgk brothers.[3] In a letter to the astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, written on August 11th 1844, Humboldt describes his relationship with the Schomburgk brothers in vivid terms:
„It will be a great joy to me when you confer a doctorate to Robert H. Schomburgk during the celebration. He is a man, who, completely self taught and with a lot of hard work and exposed to great dangers [...] discovered and opened up an important part of South America. His geographical and natural history collections are equally important. And on top of that he is a kind man, highly regarded by our royal couple, a man, who has enriched our museums without any reimbursements. He has been in London since July to complete the trigonometric map of British Guyana. His younger brother Richard, who the king sent out as botanist and gardener has proved to be equally bright. He has just brought back the greatest collection of living palms and orchids the botanic garden has ever received, as well as live animals from the Rio Essequibo and beautiful collections of stuffed birds and mammals, fishes in alcohol and minerals. A third very talented brother, Otto, was tormented by Mr. von Kamptz and incarcerated in a fortress and then, honoured and lamented, he was liberated by me in 1839. It is a very distinguished family, in which a small demagogue should not be missing, if only as an ornament.“[4]
Together with their wives Otto and Richard Schomburgk arrived in Port Adelaide on August 6th 1849. In this paper I would like to explore how these two brothers, who had received their scientific training and promotion in the circle surrounding Alexander von Humboldt, reacted to the unfamiliar conditions in the young British colony. I would also like to give at least some indication as to the differences between the Schomburgk brothers’ treatment of the natural resources of the new colony and that of the English colonists of the time. The two brothers did not come to South Australia as explorers, though, they were immigrants seeking a new livelihood for themselves and their families. But their endeavor to report on the newly settled continent in a scientific manner was not at all diminished by this fact. From the very beginning the brothers had to meet two challenges: They had to survive as gardeners and farmers under largely unfamiliar conditions and they had to live up to the expectations of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, which had supported them financially. In a letter Otto Schomburgk wrote to Alexander von Humboldt on December 25/26th 1849 this objective is expressed in the following words: „[...] that here, too, all our efforts and endeavors will be focused on making ourselves worthy of the love you have shown us, as it will always be our aspiration, as much as it is within our feeble powers, to contribute to the expansion of the realm of sciences, which honour you as their great and unparalleled master.“[5]
I have chosen the title „Acclimatization“, because it seemed most appropriate to illustrate both the living conditions and the area of work of the brothers Otto and Richard Schomburgk. This term, according to a neutral definition, means „gradual adjustment of living organisms to climatic conditions other than those to which they are accustomed.“ The meteorological diary Otto Schomburgk had kept during the long voyage provides us with all the data on their date of arrival: southwesterly winds, water temperature 11.6 degrees Réaumur (i.e. 14 degrees Celsius) air-temperature at 2 pm 10 degrees (12.5 C). If one compares these temperatures to the ones they had measured on their date of departure from Hamburg on April 14th - they are nearly the same.[6] The climatic adjustment seems not to have been all that difficult, at least in the beginning. Today we know, however, as Jared Diamond puts it „Australia stands out from all the other continents: the differences between Eurasia, Africa, North America, and South America fade into insignificance compared with the differences between Australia and any of those other landmasses. Australia is by far the driest, smallest, flattest, most infertile, climatically most unpredictable, and biologically most impoverished continent. It was the last continent to be occupied by Europeans.“[7] But the Schomburgk brothers did not know that in 1849, and what I would like to do in a kind of microanalysis of a few documents is to investigate how this particular German family, who were unusually well educated, coped under these new and challenging conditions. I would also like to include the expectations the brothers had built up while still in Prussia, to the extent that this can be reconstructed from the texts. The conclusions the Schomburgk brothers came to on the basis of their experiences in the first few years can, however, only be mentioned briefly. But I hope that the detailed account of the first years will throw a new light on the later works of Richard Schomburgk, who in many areas supported agricultural reforms in South Australia.
Acclimatization as such is of course one important aspect of colonialism. The survival of the settlers depended to a large degree on the successful acclimatization of the plants and animals they brought with them. And this was especially true for the colonization of Australia, because „Australia is probably the only country in the world in which, with a single exception (Macadamia, the Queensland nut), every edible cultivar and every crop plant is, or has been derived from, an introduction, as indeed is true of most of the ornamentals, lawn grasses and sown pasture species. The first Fleet and its colonist successors were to provide Australia not only with a new human population, but also with an almost completely new economic flora. Pike has summarized the reports of the early explorers in these words: „No local plant could be coaxed to make food; no indigenous animal gave milk for human use; no native tree yielded edible fruit.“[8] The remark by the Frenchman Auguste Hardy: „The whole of colonization is a vast act of acclimatization.“[9] thus holds true especially for Australia. And it is no wonder that Australian science in its beginnings was engaged mainly in acclimatization. „Australian science of the 1860s and beyond was closely associated with the acclimatization movement. The early phase witnessed the serious involvement of such scientific figures as W. L. Martin, A.R.C. Selwyn, A.A.C. Le Souef, Ferdinand von Mueller, Frederick McCoy and Dr. Thomas Black (Victoria), G. W. Francis and R. M. Schomburgk (South Australia) and George Bennett, W.B. Clarke and W. J. Stephens (NSW).“[10] All the directors of the Botanical Gardens in Australia were closely associated with the acclimatization movement. In addition „Acclimatization Societies“ were founded in all colonies, supported by unusually high government subsidies.[11] In Australia the lack of crop plants was noticed at the very beginning. To the early settlers the country seemed deficient in flora and fauna, which - in comparison to New Guinea for example - is an accurate impression. Diamond in his book „Guns, Germs and Steel“ describes the contrast as follows: „New Guinea is covered with young fertile soil, as a consequence of volcanic activity, glaciers repeatedly advancing and retreating and scouring the highlands, and mountain streams carrying huge quantities of silt to the lowlands. In contrast, Australia has by far the oldest, most infertile, most nutrient-leached soils of any continent, because of Australia’s little volcanic activity and its lack of high mountains and glaciers. Despite having only one-tenth of Australia’s area, New Guinea is home to approximately as many mammal and bird species as is Australia - a result of New Guinea’s equatorial location, much higher rainfall, much greater range of elevations, and greater fertility.“[12] So what was wrong was not the failure to notice this deficiency but rather the erroneous belief that one could correct it by introducing all sorts of plants and animals thus creating a new paradise - replete with all plants and animals to which they were attached. To us today the fantasies of the acclimatization societies seem naive in their beliefs and ruthless in their aims. Their lack of knowledge about the complex interdependence of the forces of nature and their inability to perceive and appreciate the particular qualities of the landscape make them see it merely as something that can be transformed at will. One exponent of this attitude is George Francis, the first director of the Botanic Garden in Adelaide. He had arrived in Adelaide from England in the same year as the Schomburgk brothers and he liked to call himself a „cultivator of plants in England, and a lover of and writer upon botany.“[13] As early as 1850, Francis saw the need for a botanical garden and approached the governor of the province with the proposal to establish one. The main task of the botanical garden would be the introduction of new plant species. In 1862, after the successful establishment of the Botanic Garden he went public putting forth the proposal to establish an acclimatization society[14]. Societies of this kind were novel in those days, and so Francis goes into some detail describing the importance and the history of such societies, introduced to supplement the work done in botanical gardens. He quotes Isidore St. Hilaire, the French founder of such societies, who stated that it should „be composed of agriculturalists, naturalists, landholders, all the scientific men - not only in France - but of every civilized country, all of whom would aid in a work which required the help of everybody, because it was for the good of everybody.“ The aim is to „people our fields, our forests, and our rivers with new guests; to increase and vary our alimentary resources; and to create other economical or additional products.“[15] Francis concludes his talk thus: „Let me express a hope that future generations may hunt their deer, their giraffes, their antelopes, and their ostriches, without either lions, tigers or gorillas; that they may have, American like, flocks of pigeons without destructive herds of buffalo; that they may have domestic fowls and game birds surpassing those common to us now; that they may have swifter bullocks, longer and finer fleeced sheep from at present; with dromedaries traversing the desert; and that desert itself, notwithstanding its drought, teeming with animal and human food.“[16] The Schomburgk brothers also had their dreams and had brought seeds with them from Germany, but their background was quite different.
Richard Schomburgk, trained as a gardener, had worked in the Royal Gardens of Sanssouci in 1840 and had then - with the help of his older brother Robert - had the rare opportunity to accompany Robert on an expedition to British Guyana. After his return he had published an extensive travel journal in three volumes about this expedition. His brother Otto was the only one in the family who had received an academic education. He studied theology and then medicine. As a student he came into conflict with the authoritarian Prussian state and was sentenced to a few months in jail, from whence, as previously stated, he was freed by Humboldt. He translated into German the expedition report of his brother Robert, which had originally been published in English. All three brothers were strongly influenced and sponsored by Alexander von Humboldt, who had returned to Berlin in 1827 after his long stay in Paris to become the central promoter and patron of the sciences. Humboldt wrote a detailed foreword to the expedition reports of Robert and Richard and he also organized the finances for Richard’s participation in the expedition as well as for Otto and Richard’s emigration to Australia. The exceptional closeness to Alexander von Humboldt is evident in the two letters handed down to us, the first is written by Otto just before embarking for Australia in Hamburg,[17] the second is written in Buchsfelde, near Gawler in South Australia.[18] It is the second letter I will mostly refer to in the next part of my talk.
[1] Alexander von Humboldt: Vorwort [and] über einige wichtige Punkte der Geographie Guyana’s. In: Otto A. Schomburgk (Ed.): Robert Hermann Schomburgk’s Reisen in Guiana und am Orinoko während der Jahre 1835-1839. Nach seinen Berichten und Mitteilungen an die Geographische Gesellschaft in London. Leipzig, XV-XXIV, 1-39. See also Ulrike Moheit: Alexander von Humboldt und Australien. In: Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen, 138, 1994/3, pp. 171-181.
[2] Richard Schomburgk: Reisen in Britisch-Guiana in den Jahren 1840-1844: nebst einer Fauna und Flora Guiana’s ...; mit Abbildungen und einer Karte von Britisch-Guiana. 3 Vols. Leipzig 1847-48.
In a reference written for Richard Schomburgk Humboldt emphasizes the importance of this journal and recommends that the varied botanical and zoological discoveries be recorded in an appendix. See letter by A. v. Humboldt to Richard Schomburgk, Potsdam 6. 1. 1846; in: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Hs.-Abt., Autographensammlung I/184.
[3] See letter by Otto Schomburgk to Alexander von Humboldt, Hamburg, 21. 3. 1849; manuscript in Museum Jijón y Caamaño, Quito. The letters are probably now kept in Banco Central del Ecuador. Manuscritos (Serie 14, Colección 37 Archivo Histórico) 02489.
[4] Humboldt to Bessel, Berlin 11. 8. 1844. In: Briefwechsel zwischen Alexander von Humboldt und Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel. Ed. Hans-Joachim Felber. Berlin 1994 (Beiträge zur Alexander-von-Humboldt-Forschung; 10), p. 199. Translation from the German (my translation)
[5] Otto Schomburgk to Alexander von Humboldt, Buchsfelde 25./26. 12. 1849; manuscript in op. cit. (n. 4).
[6] See Otto Schomburgk: [published under the name Richard Schomburgk with the title] „Herrn R. Schomburgk meteorologisches Tagebuch seiner Reise von Hamburg nach Adelaide im Sommer 1848 [!]“ in: Monatsberichte Über die Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin. Red. von Dr. T.E. Gumprecht. Neue Folge: Achter Band. Berlin 1851, pp. 268-282.
[7] Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel. The fates of Human Societies. New York 1999, p. 296.
[8] R. L. Burt and W. T. Williams: Plant introduction in Australia. In: R. W. Home (Ed.): Australian Science in the making. Cambridge 1988. p. 252.
[9] Auguste Hardy: L’ Algérie agricole commerciale, industrielle. Paris 1860. p. 7. (my translation)
[10] Ian Inkster and Jan Todd: Support for the scientific enterprise, 1850-1900. In: R. W. Home (Ed.): Australian Science in the making. Cambridge 1988. p. 119-20.
[11] J. M. Powell: Environmental management in Australia, 1788-1914. Oxford 1976, p. 72: „Whatever the mixture of motives, the acclimatization societies at their worst made gigantic and notorious errors, and at their best greatly assisted the establishment of agriculture and rural industry. In the seventies, long before the colonial governments chose to make a direct and committed entry into the field via specially-created resource management agencies, these voluntary bodies were generally very active and influential.“
[12] Diamond, op. cit. (n. 8), p. 302-3.
[13] Barbara J. Best: George William Francis: First Director of Adelaide Botanic Garden. Adelaide 1986, p. 24.
[14] George William Francis: The Acclimatisation of Harmless, Useful, Interesting, and Ornamental, Animals and Plants, Being a Paper read before the Philosophical Society, Adelaide, South Australia on May 13th, 1862. Published by the Philosophical Society for gratuitous distribution. Adelaide 1862. See Louise Ashmore: Harmful, Useful, Interesting and Ornamental: Perceptions of Diversity in Nature. Honours Thesis University of Adelaide 2002.
[15] Francis, ibid., p. 7.
[16] Ibid., p. 20.
[17] Otto Schomburgk to Alexander von Humboldt, op. cit. (n. 4)
[18] Otto Schomburgk to Alexander von Humboldt, op. cit. (n. 6)
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