WRITING CIVIL AND NATURAL HISTORIES ON THE ISLAND OF AMBON

George Eberhard Rumphius is arguably the most important natural historian of the early modern Dutch colonial archipelago, whose works defined the medicinal botany of Indonesia for the following three hundred years. This talk offers an overview of his extensive writings and publications that started with histories and geographies of the East Indonesian archipelago of Maluku and ended with the posthumous publication of the "Herbarium amboinense", whose printing was delayed because of the censorial intervention of the Dutch East India Company.

Rumphius' writings were heavily influenced by the Muslim Imam Ridjali, whose "Hikayat tanah hitu" is the only surviving local account of Maluku from the period. We examine the reasons why Rumphius decided to translate the "Hikayat tanah hitu", and present this translation as his own, credible account of the development of society on Ambon.

It is argued that there were significant resonances between the religious and philosophical worldviews of Rumphius and the religious and philosophical worldviews of Imam Ridjali. I suggest that the seventeenth-century Indonesian archipelago saw the concurrent development of Reformed Christian thinking amongst Dutch colonisers and reformist Islamic movements within Muslim elites. There was a striking similarity between the questions that Rumphius and Ridjali asked, even if their answers would ultimately differ.

Significantly, Rumphius' approach to medicinal healing was determined by these religious and philosophical considerations and debates.

You may also like the following events from Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance - CSMBR:

• Next Tuesday, 25th November, 05:00 pm, MEDICAL ALCHEMY, PHILOLOGY, AND THE ANTICHRIST. Rupescissa's «De Famulatu Philosophie Evangelio» in Pisa, Italy
• Next month, 4th December, 05:00 pm, UNCERTAIN DYNAMICS. The Diagnosis of Changing Diseases in Seventeenth-Century Medicine in Pisa, Italy
• Happening on, 24th February, 10:00 am, STUDIOLO DIGITAL HUMANITIES LAB - CSMBR Winter School 2025 in Pisa