“A Bare Outpost of Learned European Culture on the Edge of the Jungles of Java”: Johan Maurits Mohr (1716-1775) and the Emergence of Instrumental and Institutional Science in Dutch Colonial Indonesia (2004)
Zuidervaart, Huibert Jan (Author)
Gent, Rob H. van (Author)
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 95
Pages: 1--33
Publication date: 2004
Language: English
The transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769 appear to mark the starting point of instrumental science in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). This essay examines the conditions that triggered and constituted instrumental and institutional science on Indonesian soil in the late eighteenth century. In 1765 the Reverend J. M. Mohr, whose wife had received a large inheritance, undertook to build a fully equipped private observatory in Batavia (now Jakarta). There he made several major astronomical and meteorological observations. Mohr's initiative inspired other Europeans living on Java around 1770 to start a scientific movement. Because of the lack of governmental and other support, it was not until 1778 that this offspring of the Dutch-Indonesian Enlightenment became a reality. The Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen tried from the beginning to put into effect the program Mohr had outlined. The members even bought his instruments from his widow, intending to continue his measurements. For a number of reasons, however, this instrumental program was more than the society could support. Around 1790 instrumental science in the former Dutch East Indies came to a standstill, not to be resumed for several decades.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Pepijn Brandon;
Marten Dondorp;
(2023)
Nodes of knowledge, managing transfer: Shipbuilding and repair during the transformation from sail to steam
(/p/isis/citation/CBB029547827/)
Thesis
Luthfi Adam;
(2020)
Cultivating Power: Buitenzorg Botanic Garden and Empire-Building in the Netherlands East Indies, 1745-1917
(/p/isis/citation/CBB491950509/)
Chapter
Matsuura, Oscar T.;
Zuidervaart, Huib J.;
(2014)
America's Earliest (European-Style) Astronomical Observatory, Founded and Used by Georg Marggrafe in Dutch Colonial Brazil, 1638--1643
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001420883/)
Article
Hoogte, Arjo Roersch van der;
Pieters, Toine;
(2013)
From Javanese Coca to Java Coca: An Exemplary Product of Dutch Colonial Agro-Industrialism, 1880--1920
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001252167/)
Article
Oosterhout, Dianne Van;
(2008)
From Colonial to Postcolonial Irrigation Technology: Technological Romanticism and the Revival of Colonial Water Tanks in Java, Indonesia
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000950519/)
Book
G. Roger Knight;
(2018)
Sugar, Steam and Steel: The Industrial Project in Colonial Java, 1830-1885
(/p/isis/citation/CBB104279760/)
Article
Sebastiaan Broere;
(2019)
Picturing Ethnopsychology: A Colonial Psychiatrist’s Struggles to Examine Javanese Minds, 1910–1925
(/p/isis/citation/CBB670172565/)
Article
Kevin E. Ko;
(2016)
The Anatomical Perspective: Epistemology and Ethics in a Colonial Missionary Clinic
(/p/isis/citation/CBB265422705/)
Chapter
Ertsen, M. W.;
(2005)
Irrigation design in the Netherlands East Indies: The Tjipoenegara system in West Java
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001180596/)
Article
Genie Yoo;
(2018)
Wars and Wonders: The Inter-Island Information Networks of Georg Everhard Rumphius
(/p/isis/citation/CBB596592605/)
Book
Fenneke Sysling;
(2016)
Racial Science and Human Diversity in Colonial Indonesia
(/p/isis/citation/CBB334761012/)
Article
Hans Pols;
Warwick Anderson;
(2018)
The Mestizos of Kisar: An Insular Racial Laboratory in the Malay Archipelago
(/p/isis/citation/CBB838164227/)
Book
Leo van Bergen;
(2019)
The Dutch East Indies Red Cross, 1870–1950: On Humanitarianism and Colonialism
(/p/isis/citation/CBB723262404/)
Article
Maat, Harro;
(2007)
Agricultural Sciences in Colonial Indonesia
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000772587/)
Article
Protschky, Susie;
(2008)
Seductive Landscapes: Gender, Race and European Representations of Nature in the Dutch East Indies during the Late Colonial Period
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001030686/)
Article
Peter Boomgaard;
(2003)
Smallpox, Vaccination, and the Pax Neerlandica, Indonesia, 1550-1930
(/p/isis/citation/CBB193532840/)
Book
Leo van Bergen;
(2018)
Uncertainty, Anxiety, Frugality: Dealing with Leprosy in the Dutch East Indies, 1816-1942
(/p/isis/citation/CBB666452646/)
Article
Junaidi;
(2023)
Smallpox vaccination in Nias Island, Indonesia, 1854-1915
(/p/isis/citation/CBB724936721/)
Book
Hans Pols;
(2018)
Nurturing Indonesia: Medicine and Decolonisation in the Dutch East Indies
(/p/isis/citation/CBB453866376/)
Book
Moon, Suzanne;
(2007)
Technology and Ethical Idealism: A History of Development in the Netherlands East Indies
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000950980/)
Be the first to comment!