How Human Remains from Pacific Peoples Entered Russian Collections

Abstract

In 1859, the Baltic German anatomist and embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer enthusiastically noted that the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg had recently added to its craniological collections a total of ‘83 skulls of different peoples’ donated by Georg Joseph Peitsch, a German-born medical officer stationed with the Dutch armed forces in Batavia (now Jakarta). This single incident demonstrates the extent to which physical anthropology in nineteenth-­century Russia was entangled with the scientific and colonial endeavours of other European nations. Our article offers an overview of Russian engagement with the peoples of the Pacific during the nineteenth century, focusing on the acquisition of human remains for Russian collections to highlight transnational networks of scientific communication and exchange. We begin with the commercial, diplomatic, and scientific ambitions of Russian naval expeditions to the Pacific, then consider the professionalisation of craniology and the expansion of the Anatomical Museum at the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg under Karl Ernst von Baer, and conclude with the emergence of Moscow as a second centre of anthropological studies in Russia.