Loosing Something in Translation: The German ColonialImagination in the Pelew Islands

Kimberly Garmoe

1

2

This paper focuses on a partially anonymous review and

abridgement of an at the time unpublished German translation

of George Keats’s An Account of the Pelew Islands, situated in the western

Part of the Pacific Ocean. Composed from the Journals and Communications of

Captain Henry Wilson, and some of his Officers, who, in August 1783, were there

shipwrecked in the Antelope, a Packet belonging to the honorable East-India

Company.1 The review, published in the Hamburgische Address

Comtoir Nachrichten, was called “Some Brief News of the Pelew-

Islands and its Inhabitants.”2 It was written under the nom

de plume Timeaus, who was evidently an administrator and

instructor at the Hamburg trade academy. The review was

1 There are many institutions and individuals without whom this essay would never have come about. I must thank the kind people at the Institüt für Deutsche Presseforschung, in particular Dr. Holger Böning, Dr. Hans-Wolf Jäger, Dr. Gert Hagelweide, Frau Emily Moepps, Dr. Johannes Weber, and Astrid Blöme, I must also thank Dr. Jonathan Hess for the opportunity topresent and discuss work, in a much earlier and different form. Keate, George. An Account of the Pelew Islands, Situated in The Western Part of the Pacific Ocean. Composed From the Journals and Communications of Captain Henry Wilson, and Some of His Officers, Who, in August 1783, Were There Shipwrecked, in The Antelope, A Packet Belonging to the Honourable East India Company. (London : Printed for captain Wilson and sold by G. Nichol, Bookseller to his Majesty, Pall-Mall., 1788.) 2 Timeaus. "Einige Kurze Nachrichten Von Den Pelew-Inseln Und Ihren Bewohnern." Hamburgische Addreß-Comtoir-Nachrichten. Mit Allergnädigstem Kaiserlichen Privligio., no. 70, pp. 553-55. ; "Einige Kurze Nachrichten Von Den Pelew-Inseln Und Ihren Bewohnern." Hamburgische Addreß-Comtoir-Nachrichten. Mit Allergnädigstem Kaiserlichen Privligio., no. 71, 1788, pp. 561-63.; "Nachricht VonDen Pelew-Inseln Und Ihren Bewohnern. (Fortsetzung. S. Das 71ste Stück)." Hamburgische Addreß-Comtoir-Nachrichten. Mit Allergnädigstem Kaiserlichen Privligio., no. 88, 1788, pp. 697-700.; "Nachricht Von Den Pelew-Inseln Und Ihren Bewohnern. (Beschluß)." Hamburgische Addreß-Comtoir-Nachrichten. Mit Allergnädigstem Kaiserlichen Privligio., no. 89, 1788, pp. 705-7.

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published in four parts, between September 8 and November

13, 1788. These four segments constituted one third of the

lead articles for this six weeks, only two percent of the

lead articles for the entire year. Even combined with other

articles discussing the world beyond Europe, this category

of articles was only about five percent of the annual

output.3 The representations of the colonial world in the

successful serial press were few, but what they lacked in

frequency they made up for liveliness and complexity. The

infrequency of such coverage may even have increased the

weight of these articles in the shaping of colonial

discourse within German culture.4 A closer investigation of

3 The topics of these articles were diverse, including, “Sturm, fürchterlicher in Ostindien”,” Troja, Beschreibung der Gegend daherum mit Homer übereinstimmend”, “ Türken, von ihrem Militair”, “Türkisches Reich, historisch politische Anmerkungen, oder dessen Lage”, “Anekdote, Gefahr des Reisens, oder Anekd. von Barollet”, and” Thomanns Reisebeschreibung des Missionairs.”4 As was often argued by Astrid Blöme, in our many discussions at the Institüte für Presseforschung at the University of Bremen.

4

“Some Brief News” yields surprising insights into the

content and form of the German colonial imagination.5,6

The story of the English An Account of the Pelew Islands is

an adventure narrative, wherein Capt. Wilson and his crew

are cast ashore on relatively unknown islands and out of 5 Suzanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany,1770-1870 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997). European encounters with non-European people and places are commonly studied under the rubric of representation; the representation of Europe to the other, andthe representation of otherness to Europe. The impact of the representations of colonial encounters within Europe to other European “others” also had a transformative element, and, with the important exception of Suzanne Zantop’s work, Colonial Fantasies, this intra-Europeandynamic has received little attention. In Colonial Fantasies, Zantop argued that the reception of narratives of colonial encounters in the German language context during the 18th century, presented opportunities to imagine German activities in a broader world, and consequently performedan important role in constructing German national identity. This paper examines further the idea that the European reception of exploration narratives by other Europeans could incur non-reciprocal transformationswithin Europe. I will use ‘colonialism’ as she did, as “… ‘latent colonialism,’ as an unspecific drive for colonial possession…[that] articulated itself not so much in statements of intent as in ‘colonial fantasies’…” Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 26 An argument has emerged in recently that when eighteenth-century Germans spoke of colonization, the referent was the Prussian process of colonizing its eastern provinces, not to the processes used by the English and others to secure land, labor, raw materials and markets overseas. This is an interesting argument, for denying eighteenth century Germans even the barest notion of extra-territorial empire it echoes “weak Germany” explanations for the tragedies of the last century. Further, denying eighteenth century Germans their colonial ambitions also pardons them from modern anxieties about the responsibility of the West toward our post-colonial legacy, while at thesame time casting aspersions against the status of Germany as a Western nation. While the German Sonderweg may well have had roots in the eighteenth century, these roots were not in the absence of ideas concerning colonialism. Rather, this is an example, as though another were necessary, of the habit of historians to make false synecdochal elisions of issues peculiar to Prussia as those of all Germanic lands. Indeed, while the word was used in Prussia in the context of intra-

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necessity engage in relations with the friendly and

generally naked natives, while building a new vessel in

which to return to England. In the course of events, the

British introduced guns to the island, acquitted themselves

admirably in inter-island warfare, began rudimentary trade

with the most powerful clan, studied the cooking and bathing

habits of the native women, stocked the new ship full of

territorial settlement, and the superb work of Jonathan Hess leaves no doubt of this, the common eighteenth-century usage of Kolonie, Kolonist, and Kolonisierung had everything to do with the practices of domination indistant lands. ?

Zedler, in his 1733 Lexikon defined ‘colony,’

Colony, what is called a number of people, who cultivate a desertor uninhabited region. The same kind founded by the Spanish, English and Dutch in East-West-India, see also above Colonies of the Roman Colonies. Likewise, those families of a foreign nation,who live in an already populated and cultivated country or city; with particular privileges of the protected, and who retain their particular habits. The same colonies, especially of the French nation, which have been established for about thirty years in Germany and other kingdoms, such as La Colonie Françoise de Magdebourg, etc.

Clearly, the process of colonialism was understood primarily as nationalprograms for the occupation of ‘uninhabited’ lands, as practiced by Spain, England, and the Netherlands, whose intent was clearly the construction of an empire, as was indicated by reference to the Romans. The secondary definition was the inter-territorial settlement of alreadyinhabited areas in Europe by other Europeans, who were provided specificprotections by the hosting country or city and who retained their ‘particular’ customs, such as the Hugenots. The occupation of territories within Europe by Europeans with the intent of transforming the national and cultural character, as Prussia endeavored in the east, was not part of the definition of a colony, and the later addition of this meaning did not replace the original definitions.

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precious commodities, including the son of the strongest

chief, who was of course the chief they happened to support

in the inter-island warfare, and returned to England, where

the good native prince succumbed to English disease. Or, at

the very least, this is the narrative shared by the Account of

the Pelew Islands and “Some Brief News.”

Both versions deployed a standard vocabulary of binary

oppositions, attesting to the textual otherness of the

civilization and culture of the Pelew natives. These are all

terms which, by now, are expected in colonial publications:

real/ideal, rational/superstitious, aggressive/idyllic,

ships/canoes, guns/sticks, iron/stone, white/dark,

clothed/naked, and dirty/clean. Thus, the dichotomy of

authority between the occidental press and the orientalized

objects of narration is, at first reading, exactly what one

expects of the European colonial imagination. Although

these texts prove already established theories, they deserve

closer examination, for while representing European colonial

authority the German version simultaneously undermined the

binary basis of European colonial power.

7

Colonial adventure narratives validated the authority

of force and domination, and the English account of the

wreck of the Antelope was no exception. This text maintained

a discursive inequality between the English and the ‘other’,

presenting the struggle for survival after the wreck of the

Antelope and the ensuing relationship with the indigenous

Pelew as a parable of English ability. It is, at one level,

a narrative proof of the English capacity to rise above

facts, for in any careful reading of the text; the English

adventure heroes were clearly in a state of almost absolute

dependence on the indigenous population. The Pelew

initiated contact, the Pelew dictated the terms of the

English sojourn, the Pelew restricted the English to one bay

on an uninhabited island, the Pelew extorted aid, and the

Pelew granted the means for survival and return. In

contrast, the tale told by Keate and Wilson was one of a

rousing success, for, in the end, the English acted

magnanimously, finished their ship, and left the island,

triumphing where lesser men might have despaired, providing

8

discursive proof of their ability and authority to control

the colonial world.

However, this authority loses something in

translation. The German account interrupts and transforms

the narrative of English heroism, consequently unmooring

their colonial authority. The German editor idealized some

English actions, criticized some English national

characteristics, critiqued the application of scientific

methodology, and, paradoxically, praised the virtues of both

the English and the Pelew. This re-telling transformed the

relationship between the colonizers and colonized, as told

by the English, by introducing new subjects, both as topics

and as people, into the system of domination. Into the

oppositions between the English colonizer and the object of

their colonization was interpolated the presences of the

German writer and readers, who came to stand simultaneously

at the center and margin of the colonial narrative.

The mediation of hegemonic fantasies arose from three

conditions: the presence and admiration of concrete and

powerful nation-states in the matrix of colonial relations;

9

the sentimental descriptions of the colonized; and the many

dislocations of English and Pelew presence within the

review. The effect was the initiation of a dialectical

colonial re-narration in which the Germans assumed a

colonial stance without colonial activity and in their

passivity re-directed the colonizing impulse back onto

themselves, colonizing themselves into nationhood by forging

an imaginative national colonial ‘history’ in which they

defined themselves against not one, but two others; the

English and the aboriginal Pelew. Thus, it is peculiar to

the politics and mentalities of what would eventually become

Germany that it represented itself as both colonizer and

colonized before entering the actual dialectic of colonial

experience. This self-representation of Germany to itself

played an essential role in establishing the cultural terms

later codified in German nationalism.7

The reception of this colonial narrative in Germany is

representative of the active process of textual assimilation

occurring between distinct European cultures. Foreign

7 Zantop, 44

10

narratives were moved across the cultural boundaries into a

habitus different than that for which they had been intended,

and here, they were given new –and possibly radically

different –meaning than they had originally incorporated.

Variations of this process have been given many different

names: Mary Louise Pratt called it “trans-culturation”,

Stephen Greenblatt incorporated it within “wonder,” and

Anthony Pagden, called it the “principle of attachment.”8

Common to all definitions is the habit of bringing

unfamiliar experiences under familiar paradigms of

understanding. This transformation of the unknown to the

known, in the secondary literature about colonial processes,

is usually applied to the narrative relationship between

Europeans and non-Europeans, in colonial and first contact

settings, as Suzann Zantop argued in innovative work on

Colonial Fantasies, comparable processes emerged in the European

8 Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Anthony Pagden, European Encounters With the New World, From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992)

11

forum, where non-colonizing Europeans engaged with the

narratives of Europeans engaged in colonizing processes.9

In the case of the Account of the Pelew Islands, the German

reviewer and reader habituated the colonial narrative was

through a method of abridgments, suppressions, interjections

and mis-readings. These violations of the text were not

intentional, but rather that they were necessary maneuvers

in making the text ‘fit’ into a new cultural context. The

end result was the negotiation of narrative identities of

Europeans and non-Europeans alike, within a unique, albeit

jealous, German public.

The source of this jealousy was the desire for the

experiences, power and possessions of the English, which was

clearly, albeit indirectly, articulated in Timeaus’s review.

This, and other, German interpretations of colonial

experiences are about fundamentally about possession, and a

degree of self-deception about this point is essential to

the form. The strongest arguments of German interpreters

about their ability to participate in colonial discourse

9 Zantop, full reference in note 5.

12

were the most deeply deceptive; the claim that their

interest was not possessive, but liberating: that it was not

concerned with ownership, but with love; not with force, but

with friendship; and not with domination, but with science.

The defensive strategy of the German narratives was

abstraction, and while the values of this enlightened

seduction were appealing, the possessive undercurrents

interrupt repeatedly the most dedicated distortion of the

envious narrative.

The speculative fictions articulated in German

receptions of colonial narratives are masked in terms of

German cultural values, that is, concrete objects of envy

were rendered as abstract values; Wissenschaft (science),

Bildung, Menschen-freundlichkeit (benevolence), and Kultur

(culture, as distinct from civilization). These are central

terms appeared not only in the German Enlightenment during

its Empfindsamer (Sentimental) stage, but they were more

broadly used in the vocabulary of the emerging consensus on

cultural nationalism in Germany.10 The importance of these

10 Zantop, 17. For example, these terms appear in Herder’s writing of the 1770’s, as well as in the Storm and Stress movement.

13

terms is illustrated in the habituation of the English

narrative of Captain Wilson’s (mis)adventure in the Pelew

Islands.

George Keate, the co-author and writer of the Account,

situated his narrative in the institutions of scientific

exploration and nationalism. In deploying the diverse

language of discovery, Keate displayed remarkable feats of

narrative heroics by saving the Account from the shipwreck

that it actually was. In his dedication to Joseph Banks,

the President of the Royal Society, and the nobleman,

naturalist and financier who accompanied Captain Cook on his

first voyage around the world, Keate attempted to situate

the expedition of the Antelope within the lineage of

scientific voyages originating with this famous first

voyage. He argued that the purposes for the expeditions of

other nations, particularly of French, were “either of

ambition or of avarice…” the voyages under the reign of

George III were intended for the “improvement of science and

geography.”11 Keate highlighted the objective contributions

11 Keate, viii

14

of maritime exploration, while downplaying the role of

fortune, in both senses of the word In the course of these

travels, the English “dissipated …uncertainty”, “removed

error”, rendered the “dubious demonstratively clear”,

“discovered multitudes of islands and…people,” and “fixed

the geography of the Southern World.” 12 Thus, exploration

provided not only the illumination of dark problems, but

also that only through the increased visibility to Europeans

that the geography of the South Sea became permanent, as

though the islands had floated about until English discovery

lashed them down tight onto maps, and returned them in

cartographic form to Europe.13 These were indeed the “noble

fruits” of enterprise.14

In emphasizing the role of objective discoveries in

order to “elucidate the history of mankind,” Keate asserted

the “Novelty and Authenticity” of his and Wilson’s Account.15

Although Keate offers new material, for he is certain

Captain Wilson was the first European to come into contact

12 Keate, viii13 Pagden, 2714 Keate, vii15 Keate, viii, italics in original.

15

with this people, Keate refused to take firm positions on

any of the anthropological and scientific controversies of

his day.16 Confronting what he called “all these varied

gradations in human existence,” Keate instructed the reader

that they would be “…far more wisely employed in feeling,

with becoming gratitude, that [they were] not destined…to be

an inhabitant of Terra Del Fuego, or…one…of the forlorn

savages of the Northern Pole.”17

Keate’s unwillingness to use his materials to resolve

pressing debates of the time indicates the empirical

weaknesses of his text. First, the Pelew were discovered

through an accident, not through rational, planned and duly

prepared exploration. Second, while Wilson was present at

the time of the events, the narrative was only a

recollection, and a second-hand one, at that. Keate wrote

the bulk of the Account from Wilson’s journal, which he

pieced together with the notes of conversations with Wilson.

In the end, Keate resorted to the language of colonial

possession, not of science, to justify the misadventure of

16 Keate, xii.17 Keate, vii, emphasis in original.

16

the Antelope. He presented the Pelew islands as “…a rich

jewel, sparkling on the bosom of the ocean,” which, when “…

deemed by the Public an interesting acquisition, Captain

Wilson will not have been shipwrecked in vain; and I shall…

[have] been usefully employed.”18

Timeaus’s “Some Brief News” was not so optimistic in

his rendering of the story. There was no disputing facts,

but the reorganization of the Account into a form compatible

with philosophical study and the use of emotionally charged

language of sentimental humanism exhibit the contrasting

poles, one objective and the other subjective, through which

Timeaus domesticated the narrative. While the English

account was over four hundred pages, the German review

totaled only thirteen pages, which were published in four

different installments. The premier section of the review

discussed the genesis of the book in Germany, the location

and known history of the Pelew islands, the English arrival,

first contact with the Pelew people, the English display of

firepower, the military alliance and campaigns, the awarding

18 Keate, xvi, emphasis mine.

17

of honors. The second part discussed only the departure of

the Englishmen, to which was attached an announcement of the

author’s intent to follow with more installments discussing

the institutions and manners of the Pelew. Following this

was the ‘signature’ of the author, Timeaus, and his

occupation; he was a superintendent and instructor at the

Hamburg trade academy. The last two installments presented

the Pelew islands and people in a systematic and

‘philosophical’ structure: section three covered the

administration, laws, geography, flora and fauna, animals,

agriculture, forestry, and products of the island, and

section four discussed arts and crafts, diet, religion,

character, habits, and mores. Added to this was a

concluding dedication to the German public.

Timeaus loosed his narrative from the English Account

with competing conceptions of science and nationalism. He

started his campaign immediately; the foundation for

Timeaus’s habituation of the English narrative began in

review in his first three sentences. In the review, he

directed the reader towards a consideration of international

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competition through the presentation of the translator,

Georg Forster, and his forthcoming work:

Wilson’s Discoveries and Reports from the Pelew Islands, which was so warmly received in England, by the younger Mr. Forster, the work itself and the name ofthe translator certainly deserve as muchnotice by our German public, and the intense anticipation, which with one looks forward to the German treatment, is certainly not too great. 19

The English reception of the work set a standard

against which the German public could be measured, a

standard of reception uniformly applied to Georg Foster, the

most famous German scientific writer of his age, as well as

his work. The failure of the German audience to meet this

standard was evident, as both author and text had received

more attention in England. The book, of course, was new and

newly translated, and so the failing could be remedied, but

the neglect of Mr. Forster was clearly inexcusable. Timeaus

was not incorrect in his assessment of Mr. Forster’s German

reception as underwhelming. Despite the popular success of

Forster’s eye-witness accounts of Captain Cook’s second

19 Timeaus, 1788, no. 70, 553.

19

circumnavigation in 1773, the English A Voyage Round the

World and the German Reise Um die Welt , Forster experienced

great difficulty reaping the rewards of his fame in Germany;

ultimately, he took a lackluster academic position at the

university at Vilna in Poland. Timeaus turned Forster and

his writings about scientific exploration into an

exploration Germany’s standing in the world. England again

set the standard, reducing the German audience to jealousy

and hope, envious of English success and hoping that Germans

could attain “as much.”

Timeaus’s reliance on emotional language delivered up

the Pelew to German readers in heavily sentimentalized

language. The sentimentalism deployed in the review was

unsophisticated and under-theorized, invoking, in the most

general meanings possible, the physiological theories of

sensitivity and the correlating culture of sensibility. In

the usage in this article, sensibility was a broad system in

which the heart, mind and spirit could be moved to higher

activity through the experience and representation of worthy

emotions, actions, and individuals. Such disturbances, in

20

moderation, were enjoyable and beneficial, but when they

were extreme or unregulated, they were potentially dangerous

and destructive, in that too much sensation, or a weak

nervous system, could lead to unreliable sentiments.20

Operating within Empfindsamkeit was a vague theory of

Bildung, or moral education, wherein individuals, through the

elevation to higher sentiment, would effect a better, if not

perfect, society.21 The evocation of sensibility alongside

the practical enlightenment was indicative of a major

concern of the German Enlightenment, the persistent

tempering of reason with feeling. Timeaus’s loose

construction of sentimentalism was compatible with the

progressive and projecting tendencies found in the popular

and practical side of the Enlightenment.22

Timeaus used sentimentalism to create sympathy for the

German audience with the Pelew, and through this feeling he

brought the audience to imagine themselves in the places of 20 G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-CenturyBritain. (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1992.) p. 2021 Barker-Benfield, p. 20.22 Holger Böning. Volksaufklärung : bibliographisches Handbuch zur Popularisierung aufklärerischen Denkens im deutschen Sprachraum von den Anfängen bis 1850, eds. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt: Frommann-Holzboog, c1990). See also his writing on the Gemeinnützig-Ökonomischen Aufklärung.

21

the Pelew people, thus collapsing the distinctions between

the German readers and the Pelew through an act of

sympathetic imagination. The assumption that physical

universality was analogous to emotional and moral

universality was the basis for this identification, and

thus, the German reader imaginatively traded places with the

Pelew characters, feeling and acting, at least in their own

minds, as the Pelew characters did. This act of sympathetic

imagination was fundamentally egalitarian, presenting a

radical natural equality of self and ‘other’. This variety

of sentimentalism asserted the universality of ability,

emotion, capacity and values of across the globe and,

because its basis in the human condition, can be called

sentimental humanism.

While sentimental humanism professed respect for

variety in human existence, its insistence universality in

responses to physical, emotional, moral and intellectual

stimuli also rejected the possibility of radical difference.

Through subjection to the regulations of sentimentality, the

Pelew were made similar to, and thus understandable to, the

22

German reading public, and as a result the Pelew were

stripped of their own identity and volition so that they

might be more familiar. The universalism of sentimental

humanism en-troped and entrapped non-Europeans in a foreign

framework of understanding, as it claimed for itself the

ability to speak for them.

Timeaus used the vocabulary of sentimentalism in

stirring the desires of the public for his version of the

narrative:

In order to prepare my readers even morefor a favorable welcome to this extremely entertaining and informative book, and to make the reading itself even more desirable, I will share here afew short excerpts, so that the warm andfeeling friends of humanity cannot read it without a certain gentle and comfortable disturbance, and would not lay it out of hand without gratitude forthe author and publisher. 23

The language falls into a sinuous line:

favor/welcome/extreme/entertain/inform/desire/

share/warm/feel/friend/humanity/gentle/comfort/disturb/

gratitude. Without referring to any emotional state but

23 Timeaus, 1788, no. 70, p. 553.

23

desire, Timeaus invoked a spectrum of Empfindsame

experience. Only ‘disturb’ appears out of place, however,

it was the physiological mechanism through which the outer

world was internalized and that the objective became

subjective.

The German presentation of the English adventure

narrative challenged the Wilson-Keate claims to authority

and novelty, attacking the justification of the Account. Its

authenticity was challenged through situating the English

narrative within the novelistic tradition of Daniel Defoe’s

Robinson Crusoe. Timeaus jibed:

If this tale did not really have for itself the most satisfying proof of historical reliability, so might one almost briefly warn to hold it as an ideal of a warm imagination, and count it among the Robinsonades of the previous century: so entertaining and extraordinary are the events.24

Timeaus blurred the boundaries of history and fiction,

creating a crucible of accuracy and truth through which

German colonial ambitions were introduced in his reduction

24 Timeaus, 1788, no. 70, p. 553.

24

of the scientific claims of the English text. The narrative

was let loose from its empirical lineage of scientific

exploration by aligning “Some Brief News” with the warmly

imagined (thus possibly weak minded) literary tradition of

the Robinsonade. Although he ultimately affirmed the

historicity of Wilson-Keate, their novelty became novel-

like, unfastening their claim to authenticity. The English

story was effectively demoted to one travel account among

many.

Having ravaged the authority of the text, Timeaus began

to re-assemble an account from the remnants. This

reorientation was made throughout the entire review,

repeatedly arguing that, although the English may have had

adventures and found facts, they had also failed to

comprehend the underlying truth of the phenomena.

Underscoring the scientific inadequacy of the venture, the

German narrative deprived the English of capacity for

rational investigation, attacking both English preparedness

and their resulting ability to make scientific observations:

25

The Antelope was not a ship which was sent to discover unknown lands, and her population had no philosophers, no botanist, no illustrators, such on all scientific knowledge, and well prepared,to investigate and to examine the customs of the people. 25

Timeaus extended his allegation of mismanagement to the

denial of the English show of heroism and ability in the

face of calamity that Keate had so carefully constructed,

charging that, “necessity threw them on this island, and as

their lives were saved, their main occupation was the

thought of their journey home.”26

The English were clearly ill equipped for true

scientific investigation, as they were a packet-boat

carrying communications and goods for the English East India

Company, not members of a scientific expedition. The

commercial nature of the venture came under attack, for the

English habit of emphasizing commerce to the injury of all

other pursuits was the national characteristic that left the

crew of the Antelope unprepared to exploit the opportunities

for knowledge offered by the Pelew Islands and their

25 Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, p.563.26 Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, p.563.

26

inhabitants.27 However, Timeaus accepted no justification,

instead collapsing the distinction between otherwise

occupied and lazy, with his insinuation, “It is … to be

regretted, that the circumstances of the English and their

tireless work and attention to the construction of their

ship made impossible, or at least made more difficult, a

general survey of this island, or a philosophical

examination of the area which surrounded them."28

In compensation for English inability, Timeaus inserted

his own judgment as a German Wissenschaftler, who were

apparently individuals capable of guiding and understanding

the English colonial process. The lack of experience in

the colonial realm was by no means an impediment to

wissenschaftliche understanding. In fact, empirical authority

was relevant to the German account on in so far as it

provided the raw data for rational scientific practices.29

Timeaus’s reconstruction of meaning was not objective and

empirical, but textual and rational. His ability to present

27 Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, p.563.28 Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, p.563.29 Zantop, p. 43

27

a study of the “…morals, form of government, and national

spirit,” came from “…closer familiarity with the work

itself.”30

Wissenschaftliche truth was to be extracted from the

multitude of recorded experience, a process that required

the compilation of accounts, but moved beyond the individual

to the underlying unity of creation. Truth transcended the

boundaries of the local and the particular, and was elevated

to the real and secret nature of things. The intellectual

experience of the unity of nature would stimulate a

corresponding perfection in the individual. Wissenschaftliche

knowledge would elevate not only the scientist, but the

whole of creation, as Georg Forster articulated this point

in a later essay Über locale und allgemeine Bildung, where he

wrote:

There is nothing to the accusation that our knowledge has nothing more original and unique left, that it is the philosophical spoils of the investigatedglobe. The local, specific, unique mustdisappear into the general, when the prejudices of partiality should be

30 Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, p. 563.

28

challenged. Universality has stepped into the position of the specific European character and we are on the path, although an idealized one, to becoming a people abstracted from the entirety of the human race, who, in the middle of his experience, and I wish to declare, his aesthetic and as moral perfection, can be called the representative of all creation.31

Timeaus used this space of created by the questioning

of English ability first for further abstractions and

erasures, and then for insertions of new organizations of

knowledge and meaning. Cartographic fixity, the gift that

south sea explorers brought back from their voyages, was the

first empirical information unmoored in the review. The

English text had been quite specific about the location: at

10° 16' north in the Pacific Ocean, between the New Caroline

31 Georg Forster, “Über locale und allgemeine Bildung,” in Georg Forsters Werke: Sämtliche Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe, 2nd ed. Vol. 7, Kleine Schriften Zu Kunst und Literatur, Sakontala, ed. Gerhard Steiner, (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1963)p. 45-56. “Es gereicht uns keinesweges zum Vorwurf, daß unser Wissen beinah nichts Ursprüngliches und Eigenthümliches mehr hat, daß es die philosophische Beute des erforschten Erdenrunds ist. Das Lokale, Spezielle, Eigenthümliche mußte im Allgemeinen verschwinden, wenn die Vorurtheile der Einseitigkeit besiegt werden sollten. An die Stelle desbesonderen europäischen Karakters ist die Universalität getreten und wirsind auf dem Wege, gleichsam ein idealisirtes, vom Ganzen des Menschengeschlecht s abstrahirtes Volk zu werden, welches, mittelst seiner Kentnisse, und ich wünsche hinzuzusetzen, seiner äesthetischen sowohl, als sittlichen Vollkommenheit, der repräsentant der gesamten Gattung heißen kann.

29

and the Philippine Islands, was actually a cluster of five

islands. Timeaus referred to it as "a bunch of little lands…

lying in the western part of the Still Sea."32 Further, the

review creates the impression that the Pelew and the English

comfortably shared one island, where Keate’s account places

Wilson and his crew on a single bay on a small, uninhabited

island, named Oroolong. Timeaus was also silent of Wilson’s

claim that he had been awarded this island for his service

to the Pelew King.

The English account was equally discreet concerning the

Spanish colonial claims to the island, with Keate regarding

the islands as “unknown,” despite their discovery in 1696.33

Keate implied that although the Spanish had noticed it

first, they had done nothing with it, not even so much as

discovering the inhabitants. 34 Underlying this quiet

assessment was a loosely Lockean argument on property: in

the state of nature (and what were the Pelew Islands if not

that?) property was created through mixing labor with

32 Timeaus, 1788, no. 70, page 562.33 Keate, x.34 Keate, xi.

30

natural resources. The Spanish had failed to mix their

labor with the Pelew Islands, and were thus acting against

the state of nature by hoarding. According to this

interpretation, the English were entirely within their

natural rights to mix their labor with this squandered

natural wealth, saving nature from unnatural waste. And

this the English did, returning time and time again to the

Pelew Islands throughout the nineteenth century.

Timeaus turned this line of argument against the

English. He stated that little was known about the Pelew,

characterizing the English Account as "almost entirely

general" and containing, "very little from their internal

conditions." A revision of the Lockean property use

argument presented by Wilson-Keate lurked under Timeaus’s

assessment, for in their failure to properly investigate the

conditions of the Pelew, the state of nature was wasted.

Consequently, the Germans had the “as much” of a right to

intervene in the state of affairs of the Pelew.

Also missing in the German account was the notation of

the passage of time. The English carefully denoted the

31

dates of activities next to each paragraph of the narrative.

The daily passage of time was also carefully recorded with

the frequent usage of diurnal descriptions of time, such as

"morning", "evening" and "late afternoon". In the German

review time was designated in a lump sum of "about three

months."35

Despite his inability to situate the Pelew islands

specifically, Timeaus was able to tell the readers about the

their character: they were a philosophical and educated

people whose women were almost entirely naked, and whose men

were completely nude, a state that apparently illustrates

the remoteness of science, the lack of all but the most

important laws, and the absence of religion. Their style of

government was simple yet efficient, and while they have the

virtues of civilization, they lack its vices. This

establishment of the inhabitants of Pelew in the idiom of

the noble savage was markedly different from their

introduction in the English text, in which the Pelew were

35 Timeaus, 1788, no. 88, 706.

32

small, brown, hairless, naked, tattooed, and had black

teeth.

Timeaus’s introduction of the Pelew erased all

indications of race. The color of the skin of either the

Pelew or the English is never mentioned, and after the

single reference to the nakedness of the Pelew, the bodies

of both cultures sink beneath the surface of the narrative.

The depiction of the islanders in the German account was so

thoroughly idealized as to lose sight of individuals

altogether in generalities. Without place, race or bodies

the physical foundation of English colonial authority

evaporated, leaving Timeaus the opportunity to smooth out

oppositions based on cultural explanations, further

disrupting the English colonial narrative with terms of

German culture.

The problem of translation was also erased from the

German review. Translation was an urgent concern in the

Keate-Wilson story, for communicating across an immense

linguistic divide was at the bottom of all activity.

Fortunately for Wilson he had “Tom Rose, a native of Bengal,

33

calling himself a Portuguese,” on his crew.36 The Pelew

King had a Malay, who spoke Pelew, as well as a small amount

of Dutch and English. The series of translations was

complex, the King communicated in the language of the Pelew

to the Malay, who then transmitted it to Rose in whatever

language(s) they shared, who then translated the message

again for Wilson. Wilson and Keate treated the individuals

who were able to speak across languages with intense

suspicion. In their account, translators had unstable

identities and difficulty with the truth. Rose’s

nationality was questioned, designating him as an Indian who

tried to pass as a European. Later in the Account the Malay

was credited with having taught the Pelew dishonorable

military strategies, such as surprise attacks against

enemies, which Wilson-Keate foreshadowed in a parenthetical

comment, upon his introduction, that “the future conduct and

behaviour of this Malay gave reason to suspect there was

little truth in the account he gave of himself.”37

Timeaus handled translation simply:

36 Keate, 24.37 Keate, 24.

34

A Malaysian found himself among the natives, and one of the servants of Captain Wilson, a Portuguese, who also understood this language, and at the same time spoke English, so from these fortunate accidents from both sides a free conversation and easy unforced association was opened.38

Polyglots were lucky, not transgressive, and translation was

unproblematic. With this, Timeaus discarded the entire

possibility of miscommunication.

The experience of wonder, a common device in colonial

narratives, was also erased from the German text, although

they were given significant attention in the English account

as devices through which to indicate English cultural and

technological superiority. If, as Stephen Greenblatt

argued, in his work Marvelous Possessions, wonder is “…the

central figure in the initial European response to the New

World, the decisive emotional and intellectual experience in

the presence of radical difference,”39 then the absence of

wonder in the German accounts is indicative of the rejection

of radical difference in German sentimental humanism.

38 Timeaus, 1788, no. 70, 554.39 Greenblatt, 14.

35

Further, the rational Wissenschaft that was grounded in

sentimental humanism was only practicable in the absence of

wonder. Wonder, as an expression of worldly experience,

conflicted with the methodology of German science.

Consequently, the expression of wonder indicated in the

German review was limited to a single example of the

impertinent curiosity attributed to the subordinate crewmen,

who “thought nothing of it, to openly put such questions …

as their curiosity presented.” 40

Wonder was most pointedly suppressed in the German

account of the negotiations of the Pelew King, Abba Thulle,

for access to English firepower. In the English version of

the first encounter of the Pelew with muskets, Abba Thulle

and his companions reacted with “loud surprise” to the

shooting of fowl, examining the dead birds closely, even

sticking their fingers into the bullet wounds.41 In the

German version, the reaction was reduced to astonishment,

which was “almost as loud as the report of the weapons,” but

40 Keate, 59.41 Keate, 59.

36

which quickly gave way to the practical problem of the Pelew

development of a new military policy in the region.42

Abba Thulle quickly negotiated the assistance of

English firepower in a war he currently prosecuted against

one of the neighboring islands. Both texts insist that Abba

Thulle desired the irresistible force of the guns, but

worried that in asking for English assistance, he feared

that “…feared, this request could in their situation easily

be thought to have the weight of a command.”43 A prospect,

again both versions assure the reader, “…was unbearable to

[the Pelew’s] feeling souls.” 44 In truth, the English,

despite the irresistible force of their armory, were

dependent on the goodwill of the Pelew so long as they

sought to return to England. In fact, the English were

effectively hostages, and Wilson paid their ransom with

their weapons.45 This is the core of this story; it was an

inversion of the colonial domination, subordinating English

42 Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, 562.43 Keate, 60; Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, 562.44 Keate, 60; Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, 562.45 In the course of the narrative, the Pelew use the English to invade neighboring islands on five different occasions, and brought the Wilson to surrender a cache of weapons before their departure.

37

military power to the use of the indigenous peoples. It was

nothing less than the appropriation of the practice of

colonial violence by the intended subjects of colonial

domination.

The English and German narratives were again united in

denying the inversion of the economy of colonial violence.

Both deployed sentimental discourse, in particular the idiom

of the noble savage, to reject the possibility of Pelew use

of the violence found among civilized nations. Through

adherence to the idealized construction of the noble savage

they replaced decisive force with delicacy of feeling. In

so doing, the discourses denied agency and history to

indigenous peoples; the gentle natural feelings were

synonymous with lack or reason, memory and planning, exactly

those attributes that Abba Thulle exhibited in planning a

war to extend his empire over the neighboring islands. 46

The English and German narratives both sought to deny

the agency of the Pelew King for very different reasons. In

the Wilson-Keate narrative it was to maintain the heroic

46 See J.J. Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality, trans. Maurice Cranston, (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1984) 91.

38

adventure narrative as justification for English. If the

English were depicted as incompetent, vulnerable, and easily

controlled by less sophisticated powers, which was certainly

possible, then they had no basis on which to continue the

systems of colonial exploration and domination either as an

ideology or as a plot. The German decision to suppress

rational agency in the Pelew rose from entirely different

conditions. Their denial leveled the playing field allowing

Germany equal participation in global exploration and

domination. However, their colonialism would not a

colonialism of maps and force, but rather a colonialism of

knowledge and benevolence.

In discovering moral superiority in the Pelew King

through denying him political agency, the German narrative

found a foil for itself. From the inferred analogy of the

Pelew and the Germans rose the ultimate moment of insertion,

through which a German voice was introduced in the colonial

system. The German voice critiqued the English colonial

methods, while approving the colonial drive. It also

constructed German moral equality with the Pelew, for both

39

Timeaus and Abba Thulle (according to Timeaus) shared in the

gentle natural temperaments, which suggested an alternative

path based on benevolence, friendship, and compassion.

The harmony between Wilson and Abba Thulle, was

disrupted only once, when just prior to the Antelope’s

departure, the Pelew king requested that the English turn

over the cache of weapons that they had agreed to grant him,

so that the Pelew would not loose their advantage over their

recently conquered neighboring islands. The English response

to this request was less than enthusiastic, which, in turn,

evoked an angry response from Abba Thulle. In his emotional

outburst, Abba Thulle, indicated the actual conditions of

their exchange:

Had I been disposed to have harmed you, I might have done it long ago; I have atall times had you in my power - but haveonly exercised that power in making it useful to you -and can you not confide in me at the last?47

According to both the English and German versions, the

English handed over the weapons immediately out of shame.

47 Keate, 249-250.

40

The power of this scene lies in the fear and mistrust of the

English, which after three months and three military

expeditions, had not been assuaged. The emotional behavior

of the English was an attempt to disguise their role in the

violent expansion of the Pelew, and that the exchange that

was the premise of the English and Pelew relationship was

unequal, and that the Pelew had always been in control.

Subversions of English colonial power such as this have

rather short textual lives, for they must be suppressed in

order that the colonial adventure narrative can continue.

In this text, the first step to redeeming the colonial

narrative began in the very next paragraph. Keate sought to

trivialize this subversive moment through reinstating

colonial oppositions by narrating it as a misunderstanding

rising from cultural differences rather than a strategic

conflict with potentially deadly consequences. Keate

presents the conflict as the result not of malevolence or

ill will on either side, but because the Pelew, "tutored in

the school of Nature," acted from open and genuine impulse,

41

unconscious- and incapable- of deceit. In contrast to the

virtuous Pelew, the English,

…born and brought up in a civilized nation where Art assumes every form and coloring of life, and is even perfected into a science, were fashioned by education to suspicion and distrust, andawake to all their busy suggestions. -Such is the fatal knowledge the world teaches mankind, fencing too often the human heart against the inlets of its own happiness, by weakening confidence, the most valuable bond of society!48

The language of this sentimental ejaculation is

clearly influenced by vaguely Rousseauian visions. Keate

invoked Rousseau’s historical trajectory of the degeneration

of society in the contrasting merit of the infantilized

Pelew and the worldly English. The institutions of

civilization were portrayed as inevitably corrupting,

contrasting art, science, education, and knowledge were

negatively against terms Nature, impulse, and unconscious.

Even Englishness became the product of mere chance, a

coincidence of birth, in which one could just as easily been

born Pelew. Undermining the apparent wish for innocence,

48 Keate, 251.

42

English corruption and colonial dominance were portrayed as

inevitable, in the passive construction of deceit and

distrust as "fatal knowledge the world teaches mankind."

This metaphor of the world was contrasted to that of the

heart, which was, of course, applied across the text as

identical with the nature of the Pelew. The “inlets of

happiness” directed the reader to the problem of

consciousness, in which civilized reason, or ‘fatal

knowledge’ cleaved away from natural good. The argument of

the passage was that the English, in their hearts, were not

evil, but only overly civilized.

Literalizing the metaphor of colonial power, Captain

Wilson and Abba Thulle are left standing on the inlet where

the Antelope had been repaired during this entire interlude.

Wilson’s mistrust of the good Abba Thulle, and through it

his refusal of any possible redemption, was made physical in

the inlet of happiness, where the world that created English

colonial authority surrounded and lapped at the shores of

the Pelew, quietly eroding the integrity of the happy inlet,

43

bringing the Pelew to join the world of the Englishmen, who

had already been corrupted.

The application of sentimental language deployed the

conquest of civilization over nature in the Gun exchange

crisis, and this success reaffirmed in Abba Thulle's

placement of his son, Lee Boo, into the care of Captain

Wilson. Abba Thulle’s reported actions affirmed the wildest

colonial fantasies of Britain, for he reportedly requested

that Captain Wilson to, "inform Lee Boo of all things which

he ought to know, and make him an Englishman."49 Further, he

invited the English back in the warmest terms, claiming

that, because "death is to all men inevitable", that even if

Lee Boo died in England "let it not hinder you, or your

brother, or your son, or any of your countrymen, returning

here; I shall receive you, or any of your people, in

friendship, and rejoice to see you again."50 This was a

prescient statement, for Lee Boo died soon after his arrival

in London, and the English nevertheless returned to the

Pelew Islands. This literary foreshadowing, suited the

49 Keate, 255. 50 Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, p. 562.

44

structure of the heroic adventure, combining the

predestination of the English colonial endeavor with the

veneer of having been desired by indigenous peoples, who

were portrayed as willing to pay a high price, in this case

with the life of the prince Lee Boo, for the privilege of

becoming part of the English colonial system.

The German presentation of the gun crisis and the

departure of Lee Boo and the English followed the same

narrative, importing directly the important passages.

However, the sentimental aspects of the story were

exaggerated in the German review, so directing sentimental

gestures at the reader, rather than attributing sentimental

actions to the characters of the story. The German account

of the departure began with an event that was treated with

embarrassment in the English narrative, in which one of the

sailors wished to stay behind with the Pelew. The German

review told of this without embarrassment, and as a

desirable arrangement connected as part of a beneficial

exchange:

45

… one of the shipmates declared that he wished to remain upon the island, to which the King uncommonly rejoiced, and promised him a house, two wives and plantations to farm and Abba Thulle on his side said, that he was decided, to send one of his princes to England.51

The lack of embarrassment of this account suggests the

continuation of the Robinsonade theme, a survival narrative

in which a European learns to live in the wild, and in so

doing, recovers his true and natural self. At the same

time, readers were titillated with the prospect of the

second son of Abba Thulle venturing to England, “…so that he

might learn many useful things from the English, and could

be of great use to his fatherland upon his return.”52 The

superiority of the English receded in this account, where

Lee Boo was not to be made into an Englishman, but instead,

his travel was couched as an apprenticeship from which he

would return and improve his native land.53 The relative

brevity of the review increased the weight of these

sentimental scenes of the gun crisis and the fostering of

51 Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, p. 562.52 Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, p. 562.53 Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, p. 562.

46

Lee Boo. Augmenting the sentimental narrative was the

emphasis that Timeaus placed on the story of Lee Boo,

turning from Abba Thulle’s prescient discussion of mortality

to directly address the audience:

This is the speech of a king, a father and a philosopher. My readers will be struck [Es wird meinen Lesern nahe gehen], when I say to you, that the sad premonition of this excellent prince came to pass. Lee Boo, who promised to be a worthy son of this noble and honorable father, should never again seethe shores of this fatherland. He was avictim of the smallpox, and died five months after his arrival in London, and had in this short time already made greater progress than Omai in the entiretime of his stay in England. 54

Timeaus follows this tragedy with the revelation that Lee

Boo died not of a coincidental infection, but because of an

attempted smallpox vaccination. Not only were the English

master narratives not recorded in the German account, the

death of the worthy prince was laden with insinuations

obvious to even the less astute reader; that the English

were unworthy of colonial possessions, they were unworthy of

54 Timeaus, 1788, no. 71, p. 562.

47

the experience of Lee Boo and his honorable father, and

their failed empirical medicine was merely symptomatic of

this. Rather, the English deserved the idiotic Omai and the

dull Captain Cook. Germans, on the other hand, with their

wissenschaftliche ability to discover the truths underlying the

phenomenal world, embodied in the work of Georg Forster,

would have handled matters in a very different, although

unspecified, manner.

While the re-ordering of the Pelew by in the German

public sphere was not unprecedented, it was unusual that the

English were also transformed.55 The benevolent commonality

extended to the Pelew was not offered to the more common

Englishmen. The English motivations and actions were

treated as both obvious and suspect. In “Some Brief News”

the speech, actions and motivations of the English were

subtly changed into forms accentuating untapped German

ability. In the cases where this metamorphosis was

impossible, the German reviewer criticized the English and

blatantly reorganized the text, so as to present an

55 Gierl, Martin. Compilation and the Production of Knowledge in the Early German Enlightenment. (Göttingen : Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 99.)

48

“improved” version of the narrative. In this, the

possibility of German action in the global theater was

maintained.56 Cultural nationalism, Kultur, thus snuck in the

back door of the colonial fantasy, through the positive

values of Wissenschaft and Empfindsamkeit, which were deployed

independently against opponents, but which were also united

in the identity of the German reader, and which, combined in

the individuals of the German nation, pointed to a possible

path of action in the world. Kultur, in “Some Brief News”

was constructed from the periphery, through the process of

revision, and the validation of this new vision with itself,

through which, German Kultur, the writer, and the readers

moved from the margins into the center of the text.

Through situating the text in a German context and

Timeaus authenticated the German colonial imagination as

56 Thus, Timeaus again revised Rousseau, and the stages of humanity weresimultaneously enacted across the globe; savage, natural and civilized man were scattered across the world. The mechanism for change in Rousseau’s philosophical fiction was commerce with other people. Envy, desire, and competition were the engines of civilization, law, and consumption. Cultures without exchange with were effectively peoples for whom time had stopped. The tri-phase or multi-phase construction of the history of humanity presented an argument for the synchronic existence of cultures at different developmental stages across the globe.

49

something more than mere colonial fiction. In the total

disorientation of Some Brief Reports from space, place, race

and time, the reviewer provided an entry point for the

sensitive reader into the colonial text that was independent

of English structures of signification. By the leveling of

cultural inequalities between Germany and the Pelew, and

Germany and the English, the German reviewer inserted

Germans, Germany, and German cultural values into the

discourse of colonialism. Consequently, in assimilating the

content of the colonial narrative, the German writer and

audience joined the colonizing project with the English,

while speaking with the sentimentalized Pelew. Thus, the

German author and audience assumed the positions of both the

colonizers and the colonized, before ever entering into the

dynamics of the colonial project.

50