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Different Truths Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards
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In election times In religious quarrels In courtrooms In peace talks Even in the best of kinships Even in the natural sciences Different truths are everywhere They exist in health care And in handling the past
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Different Truths Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards
Peter A.G.M. De Smet
KIT Publishers
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Colophon Different Truths Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards Compilation, research and text
Photography
Peter A.G.M. De Smet
Irene de Groot
Publisher
Proofreading
KIT Publishers
Danny Guinan
Mauritskade 63 P.O. Box 95001
Design
1090 HA Amsterdam
Grafisch Ontwerpbureau Agaatsz BNO
The Netherlands
Meppel, The Netherlands
E-mail: publishers@kit.nl Website: www.kit.nl/publishers
Production Vestagraphics
Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the author’s postcard collection in the Tropenmuseum
ISBN 978 94 6022 017 3
in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, from July to
NUR 761
November 2009 Copyright
This book has been produced with the support of
Š 2009 KIT Publishers
VSM Geneesmiddelen bv.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Disclaimer Readers are warned that many of the early postcard images and legends in this book reflect pejorative views and terms that would no longer be considered appropriate or acceptable today. They are only presented here as historical materials without any intention to rekindle or endorse the insensitivities and other wrongdoings of the colonial past.
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Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s
Part 4. Professionalized systems 7 4.1 Different Health Care Sectors Introduction 4.2 South Asian traditions 9 Part 1. Prelude 4.3 East Asian traditions 1.1 Ethnomedicine 11 Notes to the catalogue 17 4.4 Western traditions 1.2 Mode of Collecting 11 4.5 Colonial Medicine Preceding Books 12 (1–2) 19 01 1.3 Shoki-Imari 4.6 Colonial Public Health Care 1.4 Different Truths 12 4.7 Missionary Health Care23 Guide for the Dutch (3–20) 12 02 1.5 EarlyReading blue-and-white 4.8 Famine and Pestilences 03 Blue-and-white in Japanese style of the early export period (21–30) Symptoms37 4.9 Conspicuous Part 2. Postcards 2.1 Golden Era 15 04 Celadon (31–32) 45 Part 5. Postscript 2.2 Different Meanings 15 05 2.3 The Photographers, early enamelledPublishers group andand Kutani (33–47) 5.1 Final Thoughts about Colonial 49 Postcards Sponsors 16 5.2 Final Thoughts about 63 Depicted 18 06 2.4 Kendi (48–54)Subjects Ethnomedicine 2.5 Senders and Early Collectors 21 07 2.6 Polychrome Kakiemon and Kakiemon-related wares (55–86) 67 Exhibition Postcards 22 Acknowledgements 2.7 Native descendants 23 08 Imari (87–137) 91 Notes 2.8 Present Buyers 24 References and Curators 25 09 2.9 LaterResearchers blue-and-white (138–172) 127 2.10 Documentary Value 29 Caveats 35 10 2.11 and other porcelain with European shapes (173–239) 155 Tableware Preface and acknowledgements
7
11 coffee, and chocolate wares (240–266) PartTea, 3. Practitioners and practices 3.1 Different Perspectives 41 12 Export wares with European designs (267–332) 3.2 Native Concepts of Illness 41 Self care 45 13 3.3 Garnitures (333–344) 3.4 Healers Around the World 45 Diagnostic Methods 68 14 3.5 Figures (345–365) 3.6 Native Therapies 74 Glossary 3.7 Supernatural Methods of Treatment 75 3.8 Material Holders of Power 87 References 3.9 Natural Methods of Treatment 96 3.10 Physical Methods 104 Credits 3.11 Herbal Medicine 106 3.12 Surgery 111 3.13 Midwifery 118 3.14 Animal Care 123
191 209 259 273 291 293 303
125 129 134 154 155 156 167 172 183
193 194 195 196 202
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Pre f a c e
What can colonial postcards tell us about the people, the activities, the landscapes and the objects they portray? Are they trustworthy guides to a past that seems so distant, in time, geography and culture? In a little known essay about the sociological study of novels, the Dutch sociologist Goudsblom argues – rightly in my view – that a novel is bound to be related to experiences of the author.1 He calls this “a continuation of his/her experience of the world.” To put it in negative terms: an author cannot write anything that is totally unrelated to his/her experiences. Therefore, when anthropologists search for the meaning of experience, as they tend to do, novels could be fruitful entry-points. The problem, however, is how to determine the character of that relation or continuation of experience. Goudsblom speaks of four types of ‘images’ (beelden): voorbeeld, wensbeeld, schrikbeeld en droombeeld. The terms cannot be neatly translated into English without losing their common denominator of ‘image’. By voorbeeld (literally: ‘example’) he means an image that – more or less – represents the ‘objective reality’ it portrays. The other three terms mean respectively: ‘image of desire’, ‘image of fear’ (or: ‘spectre’, ‘phantom’), and ‘image of dream’. It requires intense, contextualizing, research to reach a plausible conclusion as to how one should interpret the image that an author is presenting to the reader. One could think of texts such as The Iliad, Don Quixote, Moby Dick, or The Trial. What do they teach us about the people and their culture that they describe? Photographs, the images in this book, share the same lot as literary texts: do they show what the photographer ‘really’ saw, or do they portray his/her desires, fears or dreams? It is anathema today to take stories, novels, poems, pictures or movies at face value, as unproblematic representations of an existing reality. Said’s Orientalism in particular has made social scientists and historians forever uneasy
and suspicious of naively believing in the objective representation of an existing world by literary or visual images.2 Said’s book sets out to demonstrate that ‘Western’ artists and scholars constructed an image of the East to create their own identity in contrast to that construction. Nearly every study I am aware of that deals with images of ‘other cultures’ takes this orientalist critique as its starting point. One example is Corbey’s study of African postcards that show erotic pictures of women, symbolizing the wild – but desirable – world of imagined Africa versus civilized Europe.3 Another example is a recent issue of the IIAS Newsletter on colonial photography, which argues that those photographs were prominent tools of the “colonial gaze”.4 Peter De Smet hurries to reassure his readers that he is aware of the constructed state of the world that the postcards in this book portray. They tell as much about the makers and collectors of these cards as about the people that appear in the photograph. Our own present-day experience of buying and sending postcards from tourist destinations confirms how right this caveat is. Choosing postcards during our holidays to send to friends or relatives is mostly directed by aesthetic taste and the wish to impress those at home that our holiday is really exciting. Sending a card that shows the dreariness of everyday life will not do; moreover, such postcards are not available. Only the most popular local attractions figure on the postcards. Our choice will be a selection from a selection. Or, from the opposite perspective: walking along the tourist shops in Amsterdam I see that the pictures which visitors will send home do not show my country or town as I know them. They confirm the cliché image of the tulips, windmills, cows and naughty women that the tourists want to see (but – perhaps – did not see at all) and show to those at home. Yet, we should not lead ourselves to the
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other extreme and believe that images of photographs and stories are nothing but subjective or commercial constructions, unrelated to the world they portray. After all, the ingredients or elements of the construction are taken from the locality and not from ‘Nowhere’. However ‘fantastic’ Kafka’s story Die Verwandlung may be, the author does use actors and settings that are unmistakably bits of life in the city of Prague at the beginning of the previous century. The Dutch sociologist and anthropologist Lily Clerkx used this insight for her study of family life as portrayed in fairy tales: step-mothers, abandoned children, hunger, wolves and thick woods where one could get lost were a reality in the period when these stories came into being.5 Apart from sociological, psycho-analytical and symbolic meanings that they may have, fairy tales also open a window on a society in a more mundane sense. Tanner urges anthropologists to pay more attention to the rich ethnographic information that can be deduced from postcards and mentions things such as streets and houses, natural scenery, human appearances (dress, hairstyle and decoration), work activities and ceremonies.6 Similarly, the photographs that Peter De Smet presents and discusses in this volume reveal to us some features of the world where they were taken. They are rare and precious documents and bring to us glimpses of a lost world in an uncannily realistic way. Many of them will undoubtedly be ethnocentric and exoticist, but not necessarily exceptional or unrealistic. In an almost ironic twist of exoticism, we may assume that some everyday scenes in Africa, Asia and South America were sufficiently strange and exciting for the colonial visitor to be captured on a postcard. Peter De Smet has done an astounding job in bringing these largely unknown illustrations about health and health care to us, often with new, reflective captions and explanatory information. The result has encyclopedic proportions. This, finally, brings me to the subject
8
matter of this publication: medical institutions and practices. Clearly, the postcards, at their time, served an ‘orientalist’ purpose of ‘othering’; they were to show those at home – and remind those who travelled – how different people ‘over there’ were in dealing with sickness and sanitation. The collector/author of this book, however, did not want to be caught in that web of exoticising and hastens to tell the reader that he also included some pictures of Europe. Overcautious, it seems to me. There is nothing wrong in showing European perceptions of local medical practices in colonized societies. ‘Othering’, after all, is an unavoidable tool for identity awareness in all cultures and societies. The rare images, for example, that Africans made of their colonial superiors confirm the reciprocal character of ‘othering’. No culture can exist without some measure of ethnocentrism and chauvinism. The terms that we use to refer to our and their medical practice illustrate the inherently ethnocentric nature of all our speaking about ‘others’. No term exists that allows us to speak without implicit value judgment. One of the most common terminologies to differentiate is ‘traditional’ versus ‘modern’ or ‘bio-medicine’. Elsewhere I have discussed how misleading, embarrassing and naive the term ‘traditional’ is.7 It is misleading because it suggests that there is a more or less homogeneous body of medical thought and practice, which can be put together under one name. Such a body does not exist, of course. If one examines the type of medical practitioners which are designated by the term ‘traditional’, one will find an extreme diversity both in theories and practices. The only thing these practitioners have in common - along with ‘alternative’ practitioners in Europe and North America - is that they are non-biomedical. That is why the term is embarrassing. Lumping together everything which is not ‘ours’ and treating it as if it were one type is a classic example of ethnocentric ignorance. Finally, the term is naive
because it suggests that our medical system is not ‘traditional’, meaning: ‘handed over’, for example, from generation to generation. Clearly, biomedicine is being handed over all the time, in medical schools, in hospitals, in books and articles, in conferences and through the media. Biomedicine, therefore, is as traditional as any other medical tradition. Peter De Smet explores several other terminologies and settles with a term that – in his perception – is relatively acceptable: ‘ethnomedicine’. He rightly points out that all medical systems, including ‘bio-medicine’, are ‘ethnic’ in the sense that they are part of culture. If any type of medicine is ‘ethnic’, however, we may as well drop the prefix and just speak of ‘medicine’. ‘Ethno-medicine’ turns out to be a pleonasm. Ironically, however, the term is widely used to refer to ’nonwestern’ medical systems only and thus proves the best way to tell the reader what the book mainly is about: medical traditions outside biomedicine. Indeed, we are sometimes condemned to use words that miss the point or that we dislike. The difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is so engrained in our experience and self-awareness that we cannot abolish it by finding a new word. It already is an achievement if we are conscious of the ‘othering’ we practice and subject it to critical reflection. That is what this rich collection and annotation of postcards is doing. The author pays respect to the medical practices of ‘others’. One of his conclusions is the ‘discovery’ that each medical practice makes sense in the light of the theory that lies at its basis. In other words: people all over the world are rational in their dealing with sickness and health. It is only our cultural blinkers that prevent us from seeing their rationality. It is a conclusion that sounds familiar to anthropologists; it is the same conclusion that EvansPritchard reached in his classic study of witchcraft among the Azande people in Sudan in the 1920s.8 I am afraid, however, that he grants both the others and our-
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selves too much respect, attributing them and us too much ‘rationality’. What appears as rationality is often the result of rationalisation or reduction of rational dissonance. Much of what we and they were (and are) doing for our health is based on not-knowing and not knowing that we do not know. The charm of this ‘discovery’ is that they and we also share ignorance.
Notes 1
Goudsblom, J. 1979. Problemen bij de sociologische studie van romans. In: Romantropologie: Essays over antropologie en literatuur. Edited by J. van Bremen et al. Amsterdam: Cansa, Uva, 1-18.
2
Said, E.W. 1978. Orientalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
3
Corbey, R. 1989. Wildheid en beschaving: De Europese verbeelding van Afrika. Baarn: Ambo.
4
IIAS Newsletter. 2007 #44, Summer.
5
Clerkx, L.E. 1992. En ze leefden nog lang en ge-
Sjaak van der Geest
lukkig. Familieleven in sprookjes: Een historischsociologische benadering. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.
Professor Emeritus of Medical Anthropology, University of Amsterdam
6
Tanner, R.E.S. 2004. Postcards: A neglected source of anthropological data. Anthropologist 6 (3): 215-218.
7
Van der Geest, S. 1997. Is there a role for traditional medicine in basic health services in Africa? A plea for a community perspective. Tropical Medicine & International Health 2 (9): 903-911.
8
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1937. Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande. Oxford: At Clarendon.
9
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1.1 Ethnomedicine Ethnomedicine occupies itself with the healthrelated beliefs, knowledge, and practices of cultural groups. In Anglo-Saxon literature, it is usually classified as a part of medical anthropology, but it has gained a more separate status in German-speaking countries, where it has become known as Ethnomedizin (although some prefer to call it Medizinethnologie). For instance, there is a special study group for ethnomedicine in Hamburg, which was established almost thirty years ago and which is responsible for the journal Curare, which is devoted to ethnomedicine and transcultural psychiatry. Likewise, the Medical University in Vienna has a separate unit for ethnomedicine and international health, which publishes the Viennese Ethnomedicine Newsletter.1 Some of the definitions, which have been proposed for ethnomedicine over the years, place Western medicine outside its scope. While this may seem reasonable from a biomedical perspective, it has justly met with resistance from anthropologists, who also consider Western medicine as a form of ethnomedicine and as a subject for social science. From this viewpoint, it would be implicitly ethnocentric to make a sharp distinction between indigenous medical systems and modern medicine.2 For this reason, this book is not confined to non-Western ways of healing but also looks at the colonial medicine that was practised parallel to these systems. As a further step against ethnocentricity, the book does not only present medical practices in far-away countries but also pays attention to folk medicine in Western Europe.
1.2 Mode of Collecting The idea to collect ethnomedical themes on early postcards evolved out of a long-standing fascination for other cultures, a deep-rooted passion for collecting, and a professional interest
in medicine. Together, these qualities provided a strong foundation for building a collection of about seven hundred early postcards with health-related scenes and representations from societies all over the world. The unprecedented opportunities of the internet made it possible to gather such a large number of cards within the relatively short period of a decade. The principal strategy consisted of searching eBay and Delcampe (the two major auction websites for postcards, which each add numerous new postcards every day) at least once a week for appropriate terms (health, medicine, herbal, shaman, sorcerer, etc.). As a result, the number of postcards that were reviewed was much higher than the number of cards that were actually selected for bidding. The main reason for bidding was that the subject of the postcard fell within the ethnomedical domain of the collection, i.e., that it illustrated thoughts or behaviours of indigenous societies anywhere concerning the development, evaluation, prevention and treatment of health-related problems. Preference was given to images and captions that provided a promising lead for looking up background information. Additional criteria included the perceived rarity of the card, the aesthetic quality of the image (which was, of course, a matter of personal taste), the age of the card (preferably older than 75 years), its physical condition, its price, and the degree of overlap with postcards that already were in the collection. Blatant examples of misrepresentation or stereotypical imagery were considered if they illustrated these aspects exceptionally well. To obtain well-documented postcards, two different approaches were used side by side. The first and most common one would start with the purchase of an interesting postcard, such as a curandero Araucano attending to a patient (Plate 29e), and would then retrieve background information, for instance, that the
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Araucano are now properly known as the Mapuche, that they are located in Southern Chile and Argentina, and that their healers are female or male shamans called machi.3 The second strategy would start with an interesting piece of information in the literature and would then look whether a postcard illustrating this particular subject could be found. An example is the postcard showing the wearing of a so-called “soul-lock” by the Hmong people in Laos (Plate 33d). A search for this card was triggered by information that when a Hmong patient is cured of an illness attributed to soul loss he is given a soul-lock in the form of a silver pendant to prevent the soul from escaping again.4
1.3 Preceding Books There have been earlier French books about medicine, dentistry, and veterinary medicine in old postcard images and there are also English books about nursing on early postcards.5 Although the French books offer postcard images of tropical diseases and native health care practices, they are different from the present one in several respects. Firstly, they are largely dominated by representations of biomedical practices and their selection of native medical scenes is limited to natural (biomedicine-like) methods of treatment. Secondly, they uncritically take colonial postcard images and their legends at face value and sometimes even extend the presumptuous tone that is the hallmark of so many colonial postcards by adding a patronizing comment of their own. For instance, an Abyssinian [Ethiopian] postcard showing the native treatment of a throat abscess (Plate 34d) is presented with the belittling caption: let us hope that the healer washed his hands before the intervention! 6
1.4 Different Truths Most postcards in the collection date from before the era of the photochrome postcard (which started around 1939), and many of the indigenous societies depicted were still under colonial rule when the
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postcard picture was taken. If there is one thing about colonial images that has become clear, it is that these images should not be naively accepted as objective and historically accurate documents. Instead, they should be regarded as subjective expressions of a past that was filled with imperialistic prejudices, racist feelings of superiority, and far-reaching stereotyping of colonized peoples. It is now widely accepted that the first step in the interpretation of colonial images is to consider them as potentially biased constructions, which have to be carefully deconstructed to find out how and to what extent they are distorting the historical past.7 The literature appears to be divided on the question of what should be done after such a deconstruction. Various authors explicitly or implicitly take the position that colonial photographs and, by extension colonial postcards, are so often racist and imperialistic in tone, and have so often inflicted psychological injuries on the participating individuals and their communities that this is probably the only major lesson that we can learn from them. Some even raise the question of whether such racist imagery should be reproduced at all as this will effectively lead to second-order violence.8 Other authors suggest that these images may also have other messages for the viewer and that this possibility should be explored. Jay Ruby, a specialist in the anthropology of visual communication, advocates this view as follows: “... Initially there was a tendency of some people to discount the value of historical images once their point of view was discovered. A classic example of this is Christopher Lyman’s ‘debunking’ of Edward Curtis (1982). It is now recognized that virtually any nineteenth-century photograph is going to be viewed in the twenty-first century as sexist, racist, and if it is of a non-Western person also colonialist. So rather than “throw the baby out with the bath water”, it is necessary to discover what value these images might have, to reclaim them from the past ...”.9
The latter approach is explored in this book, but only after the cultural biases and historical limitations of colonial postcards have been critically discussed. The title of this publication reflects on the one hand that different viewers may interpret colonial postcard collections in different ways, but acknowledges on the other hand that people have different ways of looking at health problems and health care. Different persons may cherish different notions and beliefs about healthrelated issues, and such differences can even coexist in the same person. For instance, people who go to a doctor for an antibiotic but at the same time visit a health food store for a herbal product to restore the upset balance in their body, may effortlessly employ different explanatory models side by side without becoming confused.10 By reviewing ethnomedical practices on early postcards from all over the world, this book aspires to further and disseminate the notion that there are Different Truths to be told about these cards, which have a right to exist side by side.
1.5 Reading Guide Different Truths first looks at the early history of postcards and at the different meanings of colonial postcards for the different parties involved. This part exemplifies that, above anything else, these postcards are relics of an unsavoury past, upon which we cannot look back without feelings of embarrassment. It also outlines which caveats one has to take into account when one embarks upon the interpretation of colonial postcard images and captions. The book then endeavours to explore in an open-minded way whether postcards with representations of native medical practices have additional messages in store for us. More succinctly, the book first questions what these postcards have to tell us about ourselves and our former views, and then analyzes what these cards may have to tell us about them and their medicine. Different Truths presents a selection of the collected postcards. For each postcard,
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details are provided about the following aspects (insofar as they could be retrieved from the cards): - caption (description of the scene by the postcard itself – if necessary followed between brackets by an English translation); - sponsor/publisher/printer (information about who commissioned/published/ printed the postcard); - additional printed texts (which may help to identify the specific purpose of the postcard, such as advertising or fundraising); - lay-out of the back (postcards with a divided back appeared in 1902 in England, 1904 in France, 1905 in Germany, and 1907 in the United States; cards with undivided backs were published before these dates).11 - postal usage (a postmark or handwritten date reveals when the postcard was actually stamped or written on; needless to say, this could be much later than the year of publication, just as the photographic picture could have been taken long before its publication as a postcard); - documentary use (which early or modern account has reproduced the postcard image for a documentary reason; to keep this manageable, books and articles dealing specifically with historical postcards were excluded). As certain postcards could be accommodated in different sections, cross-references are provided where this was considered relevant. Various subjects are illustrated by more than one example to exemplify the variety in postcard representations of a specific topic or in different printing versions of the same pictorial image. Outmoded historical designations of indigenous groups and geographical entities have been provided with modern equivalents in brackets. When the selection of the correct name was not self-evident in the former category, the reference book Ethnic groups worldwide was used for primary guidance.12 The term “colonial postcards” has been
adopted, because it is conveniently short. Taken literally, it would only cover those parts of the world that were still colonies in 1900-1930. In the context of this book, however, the term is also used for European settler societies that had already become independent at an earlier date (e.g., in the Americas).13 Different Truths has been written with a broad audience in mind. In order to prevent that it could thereby loose its appeal to a more scholarly readership, the text is annotated with references to the consulted sources. Care has been taken to make this deeper level so unobtrusive that it does not compromise the readability of the text. The book focuses on the historical and sociocultural aspects of colonial postcards with ethnomedical scenes. The reader is referred to existing sources for technical details about the different types of postcards and their production processes and for biomedical details about diseases.14
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Po s t c a rd s
2.1 Golden Era
2.2 Different Meanings
The first picture postcards appeared in the 1870s.15 After a slow start, they became wildly popular. Driving forces behind this development were: - The increasing availability of photographic images as photography came into its own. - Improvements of printing processes, as a result of which it became affordable to mass-produce coloured postcards of excellent quality. - Mitigation of the regulatory stipulations that postcards initially had to fulfil. - The adoption of postcards as attractive advertising materials by a rapidly rising tourism industry. - A craze for collecting postcards that began in the last decade of the 19th century and lasted until the second decade of the 20th century (this period is often called the “golden era” of postcard collecting). In the hey-day of the collecting craze, global sales of postcard stamps rose to more than three billion per year,16 and this figure only relates to postcards that were actually mailed, not to the innumerable unused ones that went directly into collectors’ albums. By the time World War I was over, the golden days of the postcard had come and gone. For instance, only 2 of the 29 postcard producers in Senegal were still in business after this war.17 Among the causes to which this decline has been attributed are a reduced postcard quality (World War I led to shortages of paper and ink and put an end to the global distribution of high-quality cards from Germany) and the rise of the telephone as a fast means of communication. Other contributions may have come from an increased inclusion of photographic images in popular magazines and newspapers and from competition by movies as a new visual experience.
It seems quite legitimate to ask which meaning or meanings colonial postcards have for us now. However, this question insidiously limits the persons involved (“us” and not the other) as well as the time frame (“now” and not then). At the same time, it leaves unclear who, exactly, is meant by “us” in this particular case. Is it the academic researcher who is keen on showing how colonial photography tended to support the cultural and political rhetoric of racial and geographical difference between the West and its colonies?18 Is it the present-day postcard collector who avidly bids against competitors when a rare and long-awaited card comes along? Is it the unsuspecting visitor of an ethnological museum who discovers by chance that a private collection of ethnomedical postcards is temporarily on display? Is it perhaps all three of them? To say it more generally, a collection of colonial postcards is a complex and multilayered artefact.19 The best way to get a grip on this complexity is to peel off and examine these different layers of meaning. A leading principle for such an undertaking has been found in the fact that different postcards have different meanings for different people in different times. To convert this principle into a practical framework, Table 1 identifies who were major actors in the past, who are major actors now, and which major meanings did or do colonial postcards have for each of these groups.
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Table 1 Functional meanings of colonial postcards for different actors in different times Actors in Colonial Times
Functional Meanings
Photographers, Publishers and Sponsors
• • • • • • • •
Source of income Documentary merit/historical record Image-building (propaganda/promotion of world view) Source of astonishment or fear Documentary merit/historical record Form of communication Keepsake/Collectible Source of entertainment
• • • • • • • •
Cause of indignation Memory aid/documentary merit Source of amazement Keepsake/Collectible Historic merit Nostalgic or aesthetic merit Source for research Documentary merit/historical record
Depicted Subjects Senders and Early Collectors
Actors in the Present Time Native Descendants
Present Buyers
Researchers and Curators
2.3 Photographers, Publishers and Sponsors Around 1900, the majority of picture postcards were produced by special printing companies in Europe and North America. Besides large-scale production for international markets there was also local printing on a much smaller scale (which could result in less conventional imagery). Large companies in Germany especially had an excellent reputation and dominated most postcard markets. Due to improvements in lithographic and collotype processes and the development of better presses (rotary presses and later on offset presses), they could manufacture postcards of excellent quality at a reasonable cost. These cards could be shipped anywhere through extensive trade connections between Europe and the rest of the world. Travelling salespersons acted as intermediaries between the manufacturers and their distributors and the retail side of the industry. If they had been trained to use a camera, they themselves could take pictures after obtaining an order.20 Postcard orders were placed by a variety of clients, such as professional photographers (who published their own images), missionary orders and societies, retail merchants, promotional agents, entrepreneurs (with selling rights for a colonial exposition or other special event), and so on. After inexpensive cameras had become
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available, amateur photographers could send in pictures and have their own photographic postcards printed. Postcards could also be reordered but this depended, of course, on their turnover rate. Some manufacturers (e.g., the prominent British company Raphael Tuck and Sons) published and distributed postcards under their own name, but it was more common to mention the name of a distributor or dealer (e.g., on the domestic and colonial postcards that were printed for Ed. Nels in Brussels by the German company Knackstedt and Näher). As a consequence, it can be difficult to trace certain cards back to their manufacturer.21 Non-European photographers of early postcard pictures were scarce. A rare example is the Creole pioneer Alphonso LiskCarew in Sierra Leone. Most photographic images on early postcards were taken by
Western photographers, who acted either on assignment or on their own account. Several of them have become renowned for their prolific production or for the artistic quality of their images (Table 2). An example of the former is Edmond Fortier who published 3265 different postcard images and 4215 reprints of West African town views, native people and scenes. An example of the latter is Casimir Zagourski, who travelled around Central Africa to document what he called “Vanishing Africa”. He published his photographs as two numbered series of postcards, most of which were apparently never sent which suggests that their principal buyers were collectors.22 Fortier and his contemporaries did not see themselves as art photographers but as makers of photographic documents.29 Some photographers, such as Zagourski and Curtis, attached great value to the documentary importance of their photographs. They believed that native cultures were rapidly disappearing, and therefore wanted to record indigenous peoples and practices before it was too late. While there seems to have been little criticism so far on the endeavours of Zagourski, Curtis has been seriously criticized for his ideas and method of working.30 Photographs and the ensuing postcards were a source of income for professional photographers (Plate 1). In other words, they had to take the popular taste of their Western customers into account to generate business. This is probably the reason
Table 2 Examples of well-known postcard photographers Photographer
Domicile
Principal Area of Activity
Background References
Alphonso Lisk-Carew Edward Curtis Pierre Dieulefils
Freetown
Sierra Leone
Viditz-Ward 1985; Viditz-Ward, 199823
USA Hanoi
Gidley 1998; Adam 199924 Vincent 1997; Anonymous 200825
Edmond Fortier Alfred Raquez Casimir Zagourski
Dakar France Léopoldville [now Kinshasa]
North America Indo-China [now Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia] West Africa Laos Central Africa
David 1986-1988; Prochaska 199126 Raquez 1902; Lucio 200827 Loos 2001; Geary 200228
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why certain colonial postcard publishers (among them Edmond Fortier) produced numerous postcards depicting semi-nude or nude females (Plate 5d). The undeniably pornographic nature of these cards must have made them quite popular among male soldiers, sailors, and government officials. Yet the male gaze at erotic females may not have been equally intense in all cases. According to a recent study of women on postcards from Indochina [a colonial term for the Southeast Asian region lying East of India and South of China], these images were certainly phantasmatic, but may have been produced just as much for the female collector at home as for male clients.31 More often than not, pleasing customers resulted in conventional and stereotypical imagery. In an analysis of nearly three thousand pre-1920 postcards of Plains Indians, more than 70 percent were found to be labelled as chiefs or warriors. And as the 20th century progressed, Plains Indians increasingly became a stand-in for all Indians. What mattered was reinventing the Indian as a noble savage, even if this icon matched better with the fantasy of the postcard collector than with real Indian life. To achieve this purpose, subjects were often supplied with distinguished garments and objects, such as war bonnets, war shirts, pipe bags, and so on. If necessary, such stage-properties would even be borrowed from museums.32 Missionary orders and societies often published postcards to show, promote and fund the good Christian deeds that they were doing in the colonies. These propagandistic postcards are often quite conventionalized and monotonously repeat popular themes such as converting heathens, giving sermons, educating young men and women in local schools, and taking care of the native needy in hospitals and orphanages (Plate 2).33
Plate 1. Advertising card of Pierre Dieulefils 3510 Annam – Hue – Salon du roi (façade extérieure) [Drawing room of the king (external face) – Hue – Annam (now central Vietnam)] Collection P. Dieulefils Photographe 53 [... unreadable ...] Hanoï
The postcard photographer and publisher Dieulefils uses the whole back of this card to advertise his Tonkin series (which consisted of 300 different cards). The back promises that buyers purchasing one hundred postcards are entitled to a free album. The front shows the quality that Dieulefils produced.
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Plate 2. Stereotypical missionary postcards These postcards leave little room for misunderstanding their message. See also Plates 68-69. Plate 2a. Sharing is the spirit of Pentecost. Nineteen hundred years ago Jesus sent his disciples, “to preach the Kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.” Today your missionaries over all the world are reaching thousands with this message and healing ministry. Here, at your hospital in Bolenge, Africa, patients are receiving the neo-salvarsan injections which will cure the terrible tropical disease, yaws. As those disciples in Galilee followed their Lord’s command, will you, today, follow Him by sharing with the sick and afflicted over all the world? United Christian Missionary Society – Missions Building, Indianapolis, Ind. Divided back – not postmarked – not written See also Plate 59c
Plate 2b Melaatschen in Suriname. – Missie der Paters Redemptoristen. [Lepers in Surinam – Mission of the Redemptorist Fathers] U is toch lid van het Gen. tot Voortplanting des Geloofs? En uwe kinderen zijn lid van het Gen. der H. Kindsheid? Steunt ook het Liefdewerk van den H. Petrus tot opleiding van een inlandsche geestelijkheid. [Are you a member of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith? And are your children members of the Society of the Holy Childhood? Also support the Work of Charity of the Holy Saint Peter for the education of an indigenous clergy] Uitgave van den Priestermissiebond. Ieder ontwikkelde Katholiek leest het universeele tijdschrift voor missiekennis en missieactie “Het Missiewerk” [Every educated Catholic reads the universal magazine for missionary knowledge and action “The Mission Work”] (fl. 2,40 franco: Secr v.d. Missiebond te St. Michiels Gestel). Repr. Ars Catholica, Leiden. Divided back – not postmarked – not written
2.4 Depicted Subjects Usually, all we know about native individuals on early postcards is what the (often vague) captions are willing to share with us. For instance, we might read that a member of a certain African tribe is paying a visit to his witch doctor but that will reveal nothing about the reason for the visit, about who they were and how they were
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named. It does not tell anything either about the willingness of the witch doctor and his client to be photographed and reproduced on a postcard. Modern discourses on exotic postcards sometimes guess from the defiant facial expressions in colonial postcards that the subjects must have been coerced. In a contemporary lawsuit, a Samburu female teacher and her
husband took a Kenyan postcard publisher to court because she had been photographed in traditional attire during their wedding ceremony and because this image had subsequently been reproduced on a postcard without her permission. The judge awarded them the equivalent of a school teacher’s annual wage for damages.34 Yet natives were not always the power-
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Plate 2c. A devil dancer, Tangalla Extension, South Ceylon [now Sri Lanka] This picture is a direct challenge from heathenism to the Christian Church for more Medical Missionaries. Throughout Asia it is quite a common idea that disease is simply devil-possession. These devil dancers pretend to cure the patient by frightening away the demon. The physical suffering which results from superstitions such as these is truly appalling. Photo. By Rev. Edward Smith. Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society – 17 Bishopsgate Street Within, E.C. [printed on photograph] Divided back - postmarked – written (1917)
Plate 3. Interaction between photographer and photographed Plate 3a 722. Sénégal – Cérères du Dieguem – très farouches. L’interprète du photographe leur présente pour les empêcher de fuir feuilles de tabac dont ils sont très amateurs. [Senegal – Cerere women of Dieguem – very shy – The interpreter of the photographer offers them tobacco leaves of which they are quite fond to keep them from fleeing] Fortier Photo Dakar Undivided back – not postmarked – not written
less victims of superior foreign intruders. Two photographs of a ritual performer in Southern India suggest that he tried to raise his social status by successfully deceiving an ethnographer into believing that he belonged to a higher ranking priest-guru caste. African chiefs sometimes clearly imposed their preference for a formal, frontal portrait on their Western photographer, and native American chiefs seem to have influenced their portrait pictures by putting on specific clothes or ornaments. There is an anecdote about an elderly chief called Iron Tail, who had been photographed in ordinary attire because the photographer wanted to show him as a real person. Iron Tail was so displeased with the result that he tore the photograph in two, and only became satisfied after the
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Plate 3b 1455. – Afrique Occidentale. – Femmes Cérères [Western Africa – Cerere women] Collection générale Fortier, Dakar Divided back – postmarked – written (no discernible year) The card in Plate 3a was published earlier than the card in Plate 3b (1902 versus 1906-1908).36 In the latter card, the image has been cropped in such a way that the interpreter is no longer visible (except for his extended hand). However true to life postcards may seem to be, one should never forget the possibility that the nearby presence of a photographer with Western equipment affected their authenticity.
picture had been retaken with him in striking profile and in full ceremonial regalia.35 In all probability, such examples are favourable exceptions to the more common situation that natives came off worst
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in the interaction between photographer and photographed. There is a scene on a Fortier postcard, for instance, in which Fortier’s interpreter offers tobacco to some Cerere women to prevent them from run-
ning away (Plate 3a). In other postcard versions of the same scene, the interpreter has been cropped, and only an inconspicuous hand is left to remind us that we are not seeing the real picture (Plate 3b). In another Fortier image, natives are trying in vain to flee from Fortier’s camera (Plate 3c). Peur de l’objectif (French for fear of the camera lens) is also seen in a postcard from Ivory Coast, where a whole parade is spurting into the distance. It is well-documented that natives could fear the camera as a kind of evil eye which could steal their soul or cause some other serious mischief.37 This should not be taken as evidence, however, that all natives were afraid of the camera. Among native American tribes, for instance, fear of the camera varied from tribe to tribe as well as in time. Blackfeet were astonished and delighted in the middle of the 19th century to see their likeness reproduced in daguerreotype portraits, and they regarded the photographer John Stanley as a great medicine man.38 There is also variation in native attitudes towards being photographed in Nigeria. The Hausa people appear to make little use of photography, probably because a long history of Muslim influence has made them opposed to photographic images. On the contrary, the Yoruba people have integrated photography into their culture, most likely because they have a strong tradition of figurative art, which made them exceptionally appreciative of representations in the form of aesthetic portrait
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Plate 3c 1304. Afrique Occidentale – Sénégal – Dakar – “Daw-len portalekat angok” (sauvez-vous, voilà le photographe !) [Western Africa – Senegal – Dakar – There is the photographer, save yourself !] Collection Générale Fortier, Dakar Divided back – not postmarked – not written
photographs. Their replacement of traditional sculptures with photographs may go back to the 1930s, when a Yoruba chief declared that he could hand on his image to posterity more beautifully by means of an enlarged photograph than by a wooden statue.39
2.5 Senders and Early Collectors Early postcards that had been printed in Europe or the United States were shipped back to their places of origin, where the vast majority was sold to Western travellers and residents (e.g., commercial, governmental, military, professional and religious personnel). Before the end of World War I (when tourists began to arrive in significant numbers), Fortier sold most of his cards to French civilians and military people in Senegal. Only a small part was purchased by the mulatto bourgeoisie and colonial servants, who had learnt how to read and write. In contrast, postcards of the Japanese empire were not only intended for Western travellers and collectors but also for Japanese consumers. As a result, other types of demand prevailed. The postcards that were marketed there tended to depict landscapes more often than any other subject.40
Colonial postcards were usually regarded as a collectible or as a means of contact with the home front. When they were sent home with a request to keep them for the sender, they successively served both purposes. The buyer could transform a postcard from an impersonal mass-produced object into a valuable souvenir or vehicle of communication by providing it with a personal memory or with a written message. There is a study which shows that such written messages could convey the same prejudices as printed postcard images and captions.41 Sometimes, however, a personal message may add significantly to the information given by the image and the postcard caption (Plate 7). Another major force behind the enormous postcard production was the collectors at home. They eagerly tried to build and expand their collection by pressuring local retailers to renew their stock, by asking family and friends to send them cards from foreign countries when they were travelling there, and by exchanging cards with fellow collectors in special postcard clubs. In an age without movies, television or computers, entertaining images of distant peoples and cultures (in the form of
lantern slides, stereographs and postcards) became extremely popular. At the peak of the collecting rage there must have been scarcely a well-to-do family home in Europe or its colonies without a postcard album on the coffee table. By assembling postcards of distant cultures and peoples into albums and collections, one could appropriate and order the foreign, and delight in the exotic. These personal collections attested to the culturally-constructed and scientifically-buttressed world view of the Western world and helped to maintain the sense of an unbridgeable distance between primitive and civilized in the face of decreasing geographical distance.42 Sources from those days suggest that the initial collectors of postcards were primarily females, who were attracted by such motifs as views and landscapes, works of art, and seasonal congratulation cards. Male collectors joined and subsequently became more dominant in the first decade of the 20th century, when new themes appeared, such as humorous cards, actresses and “posed beauties”, locomotives and other means of transport, and so on. In France, one had to merit the title of cartophile by focusing on a specialized theme and by annotating the cards with interesting information. However, cartophily did not grow into a subject of research in a similar way as philately and numismatics developed. Postcard collectors more often pursued aesthetic ideals rather than scientific ones.43
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2.6 Exhibition Postcards The general public in the Western world did not only learn about other cultures through colonial photographs and postcard pictures but also through exhibitions in their own countries in which distant peoples and their habitat settings were displayed in a zoo-like fashion to satisfy general curiosity and to boost confidence in Western progress. These spectacles were claimed to provide education as well as
amusement. Initially, the exhibited peoples just carried out their daily routines, but later the financial necessity of drawing large crowds prompted more spectacular forms of entertainment. These exhibitions attracted millions of visitors (e.g., the JapanBritish Exhibition in 1910 drew eight million people). Their souvenirs included various postcards of the exhibits, some of which sold as many as a quarter of a million copies. The small Alaska-Yukon-
Pacific Exposition that was organized in 1909 in Seattle sold more than ten million postcards in its first two months.44 Both the exhibitions and their souvenir postcards created – without concern for correct detail – a contrast between the exotic peoples on display and their more fortunate spectators who were profiting from the political, technological and commercial superiority of the West (Plate 4).45 Native individuals were reduced to racial
Plate 4. Exhibition postcards
Plate 4a The fetish priests, Dahomey village – Imperial International Exhibition, London 1909 [Dahomey is now known as the Republic of Benin]
Displays of colonial natives at European fairs were another way of expressing Western superiority. Postcards like these ones were sold to the visitors so that they could take the exotic sceneries home.
22
Valentine & Sons Ltd. Dundee, London & New York. Divided back – not postmarked – not written
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pologists relied on anthropometry, that is, they measured and compared actual or photographed humans and human materials. Colonial photographs were an important source for this approach and some early postcards bear a resemblance to real anthropometric photographs (Plate 5a). The exhibitions of exotic peoples in the West provided anthropologists (many of whom were armchair travellers) with excellent opportunities to carry out anthropometric measurements and to popularize their concept of racial otherness.46
2.7 Native descendants
Plate 4b Exposition de Nantes 1904 – le village noir – la danse des fétiches [Exhibition of Nantes 1904 – the black village – the dance of the fetishes] J. Nozais, Nantes – Heliotypie Dugas, Nantes – Cliché Guibert Divided back – not postmarked – not written
types which intertwined with the misguided anthropological conception in those days that different ethnic groups occupied different steps on the evolutionary ladder. This gradation started with named individuals at the top and gradually came down to racial types that were believed to be more and more inferior. This descent was paralleled by a transition from dressed to undressed. To establish the relative position of each group in this hierarchy, anthro-
Descendants of the native subjects in colonial postcards may still be outraged about the uncalled-for and often humiliating ways in which Western photographers and publishers portrayed and described their ancestors. One of the best-known expressions of such disgust is a book called The Colonial Harem, in which the Algerian writer Malek Alloula analyses a set of colonial postcards of bare-breasted Algerian women. The cards were made and sent by the French in Algeria during the first three decades of this century. Alloula exposes their ethnography-like captions as a flimsy alibi for erotic imagery and reveals how the French dream of dominating a colonial people was asserted through the obsessive fantasy of entering the harem and unveiling and undressing Algerian women. He denounces the postcards as the reflection of a perverse colonial ideology, and warns us not to cover his conclusions with the cloak of nostalgia. By convicting the colonial oppressors and appropriators of his homeland, he returns these postcards, as it were, to their sender.47 In a critical response to The Colonial Harem, the French anthropologists Boëtsch and Ferrié argue that a photograph (though it reflects a mise en scène) can never be entirely reduced to its ideological content and that a cultural product cannot be accused of exercising ideological domination over a colonized people if it does not have a direct effect on them, that is, if
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they are not the intended readers of such a product. Yet The Colonial Harem has rightly become an influential book. It tells a story that urgently needed to be told and holds up a much needed mirror.48 Having said this, it should also be acknowledged that native descendants do not always respond to historical pictures with righteous indignation. They may sometimes be pleasantly surprised with an ancestral portrait, even though it comes from an age when native people were not respectfully treated as equals. Hobson recalls the case of a Cheyenne student who inspected a book with early photographs of native Americans within the framework of a class on the Indian in American popular culture. She discovered the photo of a Cheyenne war chief, whose name had been mentioned to her by some older relatives. Over the next months, she did as much research as she could, and eventually found that the war chief was her greatgreat-grandfather. An African example happened to Christraud Geary, when she showed historical photographs of Cameroon natives (that had been privately taken by a German missionary) to the descendants of the photographed. Most tried their best to identify the people in the pictures, and in many instances they succeeded. This led to some disappointment among those who could not find their loved ones in the photographs. One man searched in vain for a photograph of his father, who had been working for the missionary for many years, and felt that the
missionary had not been fair in neglecting to take his father’s picture.49
2.8 Present Buyers Postcards are still being traded, exchanged and collected on a huge scale. Late 2008, the largest postcard site on the Internet (Delcampe) listed more than 10 million postcards (compared to 124,000 listings on eBay USA and 90,000 on eBay France). The majority of the postcards on Delcampe originate from the early days. Between June and November, 2008, 960,000 postcards were sold there, which would amount to sales of 1.9 million postcards per year (Table 3). Most postcards showed historic views of towns, villages or regions (more than 80% of all postcards on Delcampe were categorized as Europe), while the remaining cards offered a variety of other topics, ranging from other continents to specific professions and from Christmas cards to famous artistic illustrators. Why is there so much interest in postcard collecting? Marketing research suggests that collectors may have several general traits in common (Table 4). A superficial answer is therefore that the gathering and keeping of collectibles (including early postcards) is a widespread human trait in Western society. An article in the New York Times of 1981 estimated that one of every three Americans was actively collecting something. In Western society, nearly all children collect, and boys and girls are equally likely to be avid collectors before their teenage years. During adolescence,
Table 3 Statistics of the Delcampe website for collectibles50 340,000 Registered members (early Dec 2008) 19,300,000
2,660,000
Items offered for sale (early Dec 2008)
Items sold (Jun – Nov 2008)
10,610,000 Postcards # 6,320,000 Stamps 2,370,000 Other collectibles ¶ 960,000 Postcards 1,330,000 Stamps 370,000 Other collectibles ¶
# Subdivided in Europe (8.7 million); Other continents (0.5 million); and Special topics (e.g., illustrators/ photographers, professions, military subjects – 1.4 million). ¶ Coins, books, old paper, phonecards, pins, etc.
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collecting declines for both sexes, but especially for girls. Furthermore, there is a tendency for men to renew collecting in middle age, a tendency that does not find a parallel among middle-aged women. In the experience of a Norwegian auctioneer, men become more easily hooked to the collecting of postcards: “... they’ve got to have a thousand cards once they get started. But women may collect 10 items of a motif and then they are satisfied...”.52 A psychological explanation may be that collectors find collecting gratifying, because it helps them to fulfill certain self-needs. According to the American psychologists McIntosh and Schmeichel, the motivations behind collecting are complex and multifaceted, but they also refer to a British study, which revealed a limited range of general motivations (leisure; aesthetics; competition; risk; fantasy; a sense of community; prestige; domination; sensual gratification; sexual foreplay; desire to reframe objects; the pleasing rhythm of sameness and difference; ambition to achieve perfection; extending the self; reaffirming the body; producing gender identity; and achieving immortality). McIntosh and Schmeichel point out that many of these underlying motives revolve around the self, especially around the development of a positive sense of self. They suggest that collectors are drawn to collecting as a means of bolstering the self by setting up goals that are tangible, attainable, and provide the collector with concrete feedback of progress. They also contend that the collecting process can be broken down into different steps: (1) people decide to collect something (goal formation); (2) they gather information about these objects; (3) they form an attachment to them (planning and courtship); (4) they hunt for the objects; (5) they acquire the objects; (6) they react to the acquisition (post-acquisition phase); (7) they manipulate the objects (display and cataloguing); (8) they move on to other objects (i.e., they return to step 1 or 3). McIntosh and Schmeichel discuss each of these steps to illustrate how different aspects
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Table 4 Eight general traits of collectors, as tentatively proposed by Belk and colleagues51 - Collections do not always begin purposefully, but may also start with an accidental acquisition (e.g., a gift, a serendipitous purchase, an inherited object, etc.). Fascination with a single item that has been acquired may trigger a quest to acquire similar items. - Collectors (and perhaps even more so their family and friends) may describe their search behaviour as obsessive and compulsive. They often liken their collecting to an addiction (in which adding items to the collection constitutes a “fix”). - Recognition of the collection by others as being artistically or scientifically worthwhile (e.g., by having one's collection accepted for a museum exhibition) can legitimize what might otherwise be seen as abnormal acquisitiveness. - When items enter the collection, they may transform from ordinary profane commodities into sacred icons. - Since self-definition often depends on the possession of worldly goods, a collection can serve as a visible extension of oneself that represents one's good judgment and taste. Sometimes, the theme of a collection is symbolic of one’s family heritage or occupation. - While collections may begin broadly, they tend to develop towards specialization. This helps the collector to define a manageable collecting task and to narrow the competition so that one's chances of being unique are improved. - The post-mortem fate of a collection is a significant issue for collectors and their families. This may be fostered by a desire to perpetuate the perceived sacred status of the collection or to become in some way immortalized through one’s collection. - Collectors desire on the one hand to complete their collection but paradoxically fear on the other hand that they will realize this goal. For if one is a collector and there is nothing left to collect, who is one then?
of the collecting process can fulfil self-needs in different ways.53 Early postcards probably attract modern collectors because of their apparent historic significance, nostalgic value, and/or aesthetic appeal. The latter motive is somewhat remarkable since artistic quality did not have overriding importance for the photographers who took the colonial postcard pictures early in the twentieth century. Fortier and his contemporaries regarded their postcards as photographic documents and not as works of art. On his stationery, Fortier did not present himself as an artist, but as a wholesale and retail postcard dealer and as a shop-keeper who also sold such items as ostrich-feather pens, Senegalese knickknacks, stationery, and tobacco. Likewise, the colonial photographer Herbert Lang did not see himself as an art photographer, but first and foremost as a wildlife photographer.54 Present-day collectors of colonial postcards are removed from their subject not only in space (as the early collectors were) but also in time. They would be wise to keep at their back of their mind that the racist and sexist overtones of the olden days
may be perpetuated if they wallow in the exotic or overindulge in nostalgia. An example of this risk was experienced once by the author when he unsuspectingly asked a dealer at a postcard fair if he had ethnographic postcards for sale. With a knowing look, the dealer handed over a pile of postcards with semi-nude African females, as if the author’s request had been some kind of special code for interest in colonial nudity.
2.9 Researchers and Curators In the last decades of the 20th century, anthropologists, historians and curators became aware that colonial postcards were not only interesting for collectors but also constituted a subject worthy of professional research and museum exhibitions. This insight triggered a stream of scholarly publications, in which colonial postcards were analyzed for their content and for their value as historic documents.55 A principal outcome of these studies has been the realization that colonial postcards tell at least as much about their colonial producers and consumers (the Self) as about the photographed subjects (the Other). Some writers have raised an eyebrow over
the terms Self and Other, because they feel that coining non-Western peoples as the Other is a continuation of the derogatory past. One may argue against this that the distinction between Us and Them is a general human tendency, which can be found in various societies. The names by which ethnic groups designate themselves (so-called autonyms) often have the meaning of “people”, “human” or “humankind”, whereas the names that they use for other ethnic groups (so-called exonyms) may stand for “them” or have an even less flattering connotation. For instance, certain Southern Thailand natives call themselves Maniq, which means “us”, whereas they call their neighbours Hamiq, that is, “them” or “the others”. A forest people in Southern Sumatra calls itself Anak Dalam, which autonym means “people of the interior”. In contrast, outsiders use the exonym Kubu, which has the pejorative undertone of “backwoodsman” or “primitive”. A third example is the Nyangatom of Southwest Ethiopia and Southern Sudan, who are called the Bume (“the smelly ones”) by their hostile Suri neighbours. Considering the widespread distribution of such namecalling practices, it seems plausible that many of the condescending designations in early colonial postcards originated from a derogatory local name that Western explorers or colonialists adopted from a neighbouring group with which they had first come into contact.56 Colonial postcards are an expression of the colonial photographic gaze and share all of its shortcomings and limitations. Many cards construct or reconstruct stereotypical images of native societies, serve as vehicles for imperialistic or Christian propaganda, or attest in other ways to the racial, cultural, technological and military supremacy of the West. And, more often than not, the biased message of the postcard picture is enhanced by a generalizing, disparaging, or plainly false caption. In other words, colonial postcards must be methodically deconstructed in order to expose how their content is imbued with
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stylistic conventions, political agendas, social and sexual distortions, and racist misconceptions.57 Some representative examples of these negative traits and connotations are presented in Plate 5, but many more examples can be encountered elsewhere in this book. Such cards range from postcards resembling anthropometric photographs of racial types (Plate 5a) to
images contrasting the colonizer’s superiority with native subordination (Plates 5b, 67) and from cards exposing native practices as primitive and backward (Plates 2c, 5c), to cards that are blatantly erotic (Plate 5d) or seem to spread unconfirmed rumours (Plate 5e). Some critics propagate that the reproduction of such postcards is unacceptable,
even when this is explicitly done (as it is here) to expose their belittling and offensive nature. They argue that any republication reconfirms European arrogance and subjects these images once again to the Western gaze.62 This uncompromising view has provided a much-needed counterbalance against former naïve ways of interpretation, but it is too extreme to serve Plate 5. Condescending and deceptive colonial postcards Plate 5a Laos – Série E, No 17 Ethnographie – Groupe de Pou Thaïs ou Thaïs Dam (Hua Pahn) [Laos – Ethnography – Group of Pou Thai or Thai Dam (Black Thai) in the Province of Houaphan (?)] Collection Raquez Divided back – postmarked (1910) – written
Plate 5b 31. Congo Français. Équipage d’un malade de la brousse allant voir le médecin à Brazzaville. [French Congo. Retinue of a patient from the bush who is going to see the doctor at Brazzaville] Collection Leray Impr. Réunies de Nancy Divided back – not postmarked – not written
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Plate 5c Divided back – not postmarked – not written European and American imperialists did not have the sole exhibition right to misplaced feelings of colonial superiority. When this postcard was published, the Japanese had appropriated Korea, Formosa [now Taiwan], and Karafuto [the Southern part of Sakhalin] as colonies. The postcard depicts four female shamans (mudang) in the occupied Korea. Apparently, they have all put on spirit’s robes for the occasion of the photograph (normally these robes were put on one by one, as the spirits concerned entered the ritual). The Japanese legend explains that superstition is deeply rooted in Korea and that whenever something goes wrong, the Koreans believe that this is due to a curse by the gods or spirits and therefore turn to mudang or blind exorcists.58 See also Plates 18e, 28d.
Plate 5d 505. Afrique Occidentale. Groupe de féticheurs. Jeune fille portant un fétiche. [Western Africa. Group of fetishers. Young girl carrying a fetish] Collection Générale de l’A.O.F. – Fortier, Dakar [A.O.F. = Afrique Occidentale Française = French West Africa] Divided back – not postmarked –written (no discernible year) This postcard draws the attention of the viewer more to the semi-nudity of the girl than to the power object she is carrying. The latter can be identified as a caryatid figure (arugba) of the West African Yoruba people. Such figures were commonly placed on altars for the Yoruba deity Sango, but similar caryatid figures can be found in shrines dedicated to other deities. Sango is the deity of thunder and lightning. As the controller of rainfall, he represents the dynamic, fecund principle in nature (which explains the emphasis on the female in Sango art and rituals). Initiation into the priesthood symbolically converts a devotee, regardless of gender, into a female medium subject to possession by Sango, thus providing an appropriate receptacle for the virile and fertilising power of the deity.59 This picture was taken near or on the grounds of the Royal Palace in Abomey [town in Dahomey now known as Benin] on the occasion of a visit by the French minister of colonies in 1908/1909.60
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Plate 5e 33. Horrible custom. Some of the natives of central Africa indulge in the horrible, and to us the almost unbelievable, custom, of eating their own dead. This picture shows a cure being administered by the village witch and her assistant to a woman suffering from cramps, caused by excess in eating of the flesh of a dead relative. This horrible custom exists, no doubt, because of the scarcity of meat, of which the natives are very fond. Underwood and Underwood 1909 Divided back – not postmarked – not written The eating of dead members of one’s own group has been labelled endocannabalism to distinguish it from the consumption of outsiders (exocannibalism). This practice usually occurs in the form of funerary or mortuary consumption, in which all or part of the body is ingested as an act of affection. It has been documented for peoples in New Guinea and Amazonia,61 but evidence of its occurrence in Central Africa has not been found. As early accounts of cannibalism were often exaggerated or in error, one would like to see such corroboration before accepting this postcard’s caption at face value.
as a lasting guiding principle. One could even object that such a categorical rejection entails the risk of creating two stereotypes of its own: - the“there-is-only-one-kind-of-researcher”, who stubbornly pursues his petty interests without any conscious effort to respect the feelings and concerns of his non-Western fellow men; - the “there-is-only-one-kind-of-native”, who is obsessed with indignation over former wrongdoings and has no room in his activism for nuances or other viewpoints. The exploration of colonial postcards is more rich and complex than such one-sided stereotypes suggest. Besides portraying our former misconceptions and misdoings, colonial postcards can shed light on other aspects of the Western “Self ”: one may research, for instance, how senders and receivers used colonial postcards for mutual communication, or how their production process developed in a technical or art-historical sense.63 It is also possible and acceptable to examine what colonial postcards have to tell us about the “Other”: what is their documentary value and what are the caveats when they are considered as historic documents of native practices
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and customs in colonial times? These questions are at the heart of Different Truths. Although there is no research evidence to corroborate my supposition, I would not be surprised if different native individuals would have different judgements about the reproducibility of colonial postcards. This would be similar to the diversity of responses that native American adherents to the Peyote Religion showed, when a museum project about their religious use of the hallucinogenic peyote cactus was carried out in the 1990s. Some adherents felt that any attention would be inherently negative, but the majority provided support and encouragement.64 My hope is that native adversaries of republishing colonial postcards are equally outnumbered by those who are prepared to accept or appreciate their reproduction. An important requisite is, of course, that such a republication is done in an informative and sensible way. It is out-of-date to reproduce colonial postcards as nostalgic pictures without a discourse (or at least a disclaimer) to denounce their prejudiced outlook on the world.65 It is also important to realize that acceptance or rejection of postcard reproduction does not only depend on the specific purpose of republication, but also on what exactly is depicted. Many native Americans resent the reproduction of certain ceremonies (such as their Sun Dance) for public viewing, while they have no objection to the republication of postcards with other native American themes. In fact, they may even do this themselves (for instance, in the form of calendars that are sold to raise money for their activities).66 I have considered sensitivities, when I was aware of them. For
example, the collection contains postcards of so-called False Face masks which play an important role in the healing activities of the False Face Society of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Indians. Although these cards definitely fall within the scope of this book, they have not been included here to honour the Haudenosaunee policy that forbids any public display of these masks.67
2.10 Documentary Value A picture can be worth a thousand words. This clichĂŠ certainly applies to the colonial photographs and postcards, which expressively visualize the notions and actions of Western imperialism. Leaving this documentary merit aside, a crucial question is to which extent these materials also offer valuable information to historians and anthropologists about other aspects of native life in colonial times, such as scenery (buildings, villages), garments and ornaments, artefacts and implements (e.g., sculptures), subsistence (e.g., preparation of food or medicines), festivities and ritual activities (e.g., healing practices), and so on.68 One does not have to search hard to find modern reproductions of colonial postcard pictures in books about indigenous or colonial medicine (Plate 6a, 63a) or about ethnological collections of native art (e.g., Plates 6b-6e). In the latter case, the images are usually included to prove the presence of an artefact in a specific native environment or to show its function or the context in which it actually served its purpose.78 A salient detail is that these images are often missing the caption and the imprinted designation of the publisher that would immediately identify them
as postcards. A plausible explanation could be that such illustrations were directly reproduced from an original photograph or negative, but another suggestion is that their original postcard format may have been deliberately cropped, perhaps in an effort to increase the aesthetic or documentary appeal of the picture. Several cards in the collection have been provided with a handwritten message that enhances the informational value of the postcard (e.g., Plate 7). It is also possible to retrieve cases, in which the same colonial photograph has been published as an early postcard and as an illustration in a respectable early ethnographic book or article (e.g., Plate 20). This shows that the historical value of a colonial postcard as a visual document is not inherently lower than that of a plate in an early ethnographic source. The collection also contains a postcard of a shamanic scene among the Sakai [now Semang] of the Malay Peninsula. This ceremony is described at length but not visually depicted in an early ethnographic account. The similarities between the postcard picture and the textual details are so striking that it is tempting to believe that they may refer to the same event but got somehow disconnected (Plate 8). Whether this assertion is correct or not, the fact remains that the textual description enables a better understanding of the postcard while the postcard visualizes the scene so vividly that it definitely complements and enriches the text. - continued on p.35 -
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Plate 6. Postcard images reproduced in modern publications for their documentary value. Plate 6a. Chine – Setzchuen – Le médecin ambulant [Sichuan – The itinerant doctor] Edition V.B. Impr. Réunies de Nancy Divided back – not postmarked – not written Documentary use in Medicine in China – Historical Artifacts and Images (2000)69
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The skeletons on the right appear to come from macaques (monkey species). Perhaps tiger bone is also present in the scene.70 Practitioners of Chinese medicine believe that tiger bone alone will not be effective enough to treat a range of ailments. A traditional combination is one tiger skeleton, one Asiatic black bear skeleton, and four macaque skeletons. The tiger bone is hot so it will be balanced by the cooler bear bone, while the macaque bones enhance the combined effect of the two other ingredients. Such a combination is sometimes referred to as one king, one general and four soldiers.71 International concern about the use of threatened wildlife species in traditional East Asian medicines has grown since
the 1980s, when the numbers of tigers and rhinoceroses plummeted, largely because these animals were poached for the medicinal use of tiger bones and rhino horns. The inclusion of many traditionally used animal species in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Animals and Plants (CITES treaty) has made it illegal to trade in these animals and their medicinal products in all member countries. Some traditional practitioners feel that such trade regulation impairs their ability to treat patients, because in their perception there are no effective substitutes, whereas others have started to use substitutes from non-endangered species (such as water buffalo horn instead of rhino horn).72
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Plate 6b Congo français 86. – Féticheur Loango [French Congo – Fetisher in Loango]
Collection J. Audema Impr. Réunies de Nancy Divided back – postmarked (1919) – not written
Documentary use in Ancestral art of Gabon (1986), To cure and protect: sickness and health in African art (1999) and Kongo Kingdom Art from ritual to cutting edge (2003)73
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Plate 6c 79. – Congo français. – Les derniers restes du fétichisme. [French Congo. The last remains of fetishism]
Documentary use in Arts du Gabon (1976), Ancestral art of Gabon (1986) and Eternal ancestors: the art of the Central African reliquary (2007)74
Collection Leray Impr. Réunies de Nancy Divided back – not postmarked – not written
This postcard depicts a Sango healer (nganga) from Central Gabon who is seated behind cylindrical bark boxes and baskets covered with stripes of hide. These objects contained the ancestral bones which played an important role in the
Sango ancestor cult (bwiti). The reliquary figures (mbumba-bwiti) protruding from the baskets have become sought-after collectibles. The photograph has been tentatively attributed to an apostolic vicar named Monsignor Augouard. In a reproduction of the picture in a book from 1912, the healer has been provided with a collared white shirt.75
Plate 6d [Masks and attire of Buddhist deities] [Edition of D.P.Jefimov – Phototype Otto Renard (?) – Moscow] Divided back – not postmarked – not written Documentary use in Schamanen und Rhapsoden: die geistige Kultur der alten Mongolei (1983)76 This postcard picture shows Buddhist monks from Buryatia who are dressed as the Deer, the White Old Man, and so on, to perform in the so-called tsam ceremony. This ceremony was held at the beginning of each year to exorcise evil. It consisted of a series of masked dances (tsam is the Mongolian expression for masked dance) and often had a narrative content. Local variations of the festival were once practised throughout the Lamaist world, but in many places this Buddhist custom was suppressed by Stalinism or driven into a corner after the Chinese Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong. Today efforts are being made to revive the tradition, with elderly monks, who survived the persecutions, teaching young monks the rituals and choreography. This picture was shot in 1891 at the Azagat monastery by the Russian photographer A. Kuznetsov, who accompanied the then Russian crown prince (the later czar Nicholas II) on his tour of Transbaikalia.77
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Plate 7. Informational value of handwritten messages Plate 7a Printed specially for N.L. Stevens, Bookseller & Stationer, P.O. Bookstall, Featherston St. Wellington. Divided back – not postmarked – written (no discernible year)
A handwritten message on the back reads: “Maori maiden feeding the tohunga or Maori priest. His arms are tied behind his back for he is not allowed to touch anything as he is considered sacred.” Ethnographic sources confirm that Maori tohunga could not prepare or touch food (more particularly cooked food) because this would defile their tapu (sacred) hands. Instead, they were fed by a servant who offered them food at the end of a stick.79 The Maori term tohunga simply means expert. It is most correctly
used with a qualifier indicating the specialty of the particular tohunga (tohunga-moko = expert in tattooing; tohungakarakia = expert in charms and incantations; tohungawhakairo = expert in carving; and so on). Although the term is sometimes loosely applied to anyone skilled in a particular craft, it is usually reserved for those who are believed to have a special spiritual power associated with their knowledge or skills. Maori healers were also called tohunga. They were believed to possess the supernatural power and knowledge to cure or invoke illness. Today tohunga still exist as healers, often as faith healers using prayer and chant as their major healing skills.80 There is a photographic negative in the collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington (New Zealand), which is dated around 1910 and shows the same tohunga while tattooing a Maori woman on the chin and lips.81 This serial portrayal of the tohunga in different acts creates the impression that he may have specifically performed them for the camera. Other sources place both scenes on Rotorua, North Island, and suggest that the tohunga may be the famous chief Mita Taupopoki, who was prominently present in the early 20th century in the tourist centres of Rotorua.82
Plate 7b Divided back – not postmarked – written (no discernible year) A handwritten note on the back of this Japanese card states: “This hot spring emerges at an inconvenient spot, so the waters are conducted by pipes to where they can be utilised. The distance causing cooling to a suitable temperature. There is no mock modesty in this country. Clothing here was worn for the picture. Ordinarily everyone strips off.’’ In Japanese thought, bathing in hot water is therapeutic and not simply relaxing, because it induces sweating and eliminates dirt from inside the body.83
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Plate 8. Shamanic scene among the Sakai [now known as the Semang] 4148. Jhamanistic seance; Sakai of Ungkun, Sungkai River [Malay Peninsula] Divided back – not postmarked – not written This picture shows striking similarities to an ethnographic report by Ivor Evans, which dates from 1918 and describes in detail a shamanic ritual among the Sakai. The latter is reproduced at length here to illustrate how well the postcard image and this non-illustrated text complement each other: �... While living on the Sungkai River among the Central Sakai (Senoi) in 1914, (...) I arranged with Jahaia, the headman of the down-stream settlement called Ungkun, to hold a magical performance (...) Some time after dark, the sound of the bamboo stampers from a neighbouring house announced that the performance was about to begin (...) The Halak's apparatus consisted of a circular frame of rattan cane, in diameter about four feet, with a marginal fringe of bertam leaves, cut into strips about three feet long. The frame was suspended at a distance of about four feet from the floor, the ends of the fringe thus being about a foot from it. The frame was held in position by three strips of tree-bark, which were attached to it at regular intervals, and were tied together to a roof-beam of the house. Close to the frame, and about five feet above it,
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was hung one of those trays for offerings (anchak), which are used both by Malays and aborigines. This was decorated with ceremonial hangings of cut and plaited leaves, and the scented inner bark of a certain tree. At the side of the hut was tied a sheaf of the large leaves of the salak palm (Zalacca edulis) (.....) the first performer was a youth, who (.....) did not possess a familiar spirit, but hoped possibly to cultivate one in time. He wore a loin-cloth, and, on his head, a wreath of shredded leaves studded with flowers, which had a sort of ornamental brush of stiff foliage standing up from it at the back. Two garlands of cut leaves, on a foundation of tree-bark, were crossed over his chest and in his right hand he carried a switch of lebak leaves. He took up a squatting position on the floor within the circle of the hangings attached to the rattan frame, while another young man, also wearing a wreath of flowers on his head, entered the circle as his assistant. When the hut had been plunged into semi-darkness by tying up salak leaves in front of a lamp of mine, which was hung near the door, the women, with a bamboo stamper in each of their hands, took their places behind a log of wood, which had been placed near one side of the hut. The young Halak then commenced a chant in a Sakai dialect, each line being taken up and repeated by his assistant, and an accompaniment played by the women with their stampers on the log of wood. Every time the Halak raised his voice he brought the switch of lebak (...) leaves smartly down on the palm of his left hand and he
also freqently flourished it over his right shoulder. The chant was, I understood, an invocation to an Anak Yang to come and obey his commands. Presently two or three other youths came and crouched under the circle of hanging leaves, those who could not get entirely inside it managing at any rate to squeeze in their heads and shoulders. After the performance had gone on for some time it was brought to a close, and Jahaia with a single assistant took his place within the circle. Jahaia having inherited his familiar spirit from his father, who had been a Malayspeaking Selangor aboriginal, proceeded to call upon it in Malay. His chant was taken up by his assistant and the women who were beating time with the stampers; and after a while a Sakai, who was squatting next to me, told me that the Anak Yang had arrived. Jahaia then stood up, and grasping the circular rattan frame in his hands, told it to dip towards me, which it immediately did - not a very wonderful thing, as he had hold of it on either side of his body. After this I left the hut, as it was 2 a.m. and I was told that the rest of the performance would be similar to that which had already taken place....84