The Malay Archipelago

The Malay Archipelago (English: The Malay Archipelago ) is a book by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, describing a research trip, which he conducted from 1854 to 1862 in the southern Malay Archipelago. These include the islands of Indonesia, then known as the Dutch East Indies, Malaysia, Singapore and New Guinea. Wallace presented during this trip back about 20,000 kilometers.

Work

The full title was The Malay Archipelago: The land of the orang - utan, and the bird of paradise. A narrative of travel, with sketches of man and nature. It was republished in 1869 in two volumes by Macmillan and Company and appeared in over 10 revised editions until the last edition in 1890.

The German translation of the zoologist Adolf Bernhard Meyer appeared in 1869 under the title The Malay Archipelago. The home of the orang -utan and the bird of paradise. Travel experiences and studies about the country and people.

In general, it is regarded as one of the most influential books that have ever appeared on the Indonesian islands.

Content

In the preface Wallace summarizes the Travel statistically together, counting on the thousands of scientific articles, he has collected (over 125,000 ), and some of the results that has provided the more detailed study of these objects.

In the first chapter he describes the physical geography and geology of the islands, also in regard to the role of volcanoes and earthquakes. He also refers to the pattern by which flora and fauna are distributed, for instance regarding the ( later called ) Wallace Line, which through the middle of the islands draws a species barrier, west of the only Asian, east only Australian shapes of animals occur.

The following chapters describe in detail the places he has visited on his journey. Wallace writes not in chronological order but summarizes the visited areas in more or less equal sections together: the Indo- Malay islands (Singapore, Malacca, Borneo, Java and Sumatra), the Timor group ( Bali and Lombok and Timor), the Sulawesi - group ( Celebes ), the Maluku Islands ( Banda, Ambon, Ternate, Gilolo, Kaioa, Batchian, Seram, Goram and the Watubela Islands and Buru ) and the Papua group ( Aru Islands, Kei Islands, New Guinea, with the city Dorey and Waigiou ). At the end of each section it summarizes the natural history of the area described together. The last chapter is an overview of the ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences between the peoples of the region, and a guess about what these differences might testify about their history.

Wallace delivers both the scientific enumeration and valuation of plants and animals found a wealth of observations of the locals, their languages, their way of living and their social organization. He writes about the biogeographical patterns he observed, and their significance for natural history, based on the biological ( evolutionary ), and geological history of the region. He also told some of his personal experiences during the journey as well as the encounters with persons of contemporary history. So he meets Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of the city of Singapore, James Brooke, the first Rajah of Sarawak and the White its nephew Charles Johnson Brooke, and later the founder of Christianity in New Guinea, Carl Wilhelm Ottow and Johann Gottlob Geissler.

The book is dedicated to Charles Darwin.

Influences

During this trip, Wallace had in 1859 could a basic idea of ​​how natural selection work. He Darwin wrote a letter in which he summarized the mechanism of evolution, with about 4000 words. Darwin worked for 20 years on his book The Origin of Species, this Ternate manuscript put him under pressure, now hurry to publish.

Joseph Conrad was very impressed with the book and used it as a source of some of his short stories. Lately, several other books have been published that relate to the book. An example of this is the product derived from the 1996 book The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen, Wallace ' embeds Indonesian journey in the context of island biogeography.

Requirements

Original editions

  • The Malay Archipelago

German first edition

  • The Malay Archipelago. The home of the orang -utan and the bird of paradise. Travel experiences and studies about the country and people. Authorized German edition of Adolf Bernhard Meyer, Westermann: Brunswick 1869, Volume 1, Volume 2

Modern editions

  • The Malay Archipelago. The home of the orang -utan and the bird of paradise. Travel experiences and studies about the country and people. According to the translator's from the English by Adolf Bernhard Meyer, edited and annotated by Michael Uszinski, publisher of the pioneers, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-941924-00-0.
  • The Malay Archipelago. The home of the orang -utan and the bird of paradise. Travel experiences and studies about the country and people. Fully modernized e-book edition after translation of Adolf Bernhard Meyer. Edited by mach- me - a - ebook.de, Hamburg 2012, Volume 1: ISBN 978-3-944309-10-1, Volume 2: ISBN 978-3-944309-15-6.
  • Nonfiction (biology)
  • Malaysian history
  • Alfred Russel Wallace
Wallace's flying frog Banda Islands Bacan islands Seram Island Watubela archipelago Manokwari On the Origin of Species
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