Dutch history professor: “Racism was scientifically founded in the 19th century”
The eagerness of Western science in the 19th century to map the entire world laid the foundation for Western domination. That story can be traced back to one moment in history, argues Professor of Dutch History Remieg Aerts in his farewell lecture “Lalla Rookh, or the Delusion of Science”.
Born and raised in Amsterdam, Remieg Aerts only became a professor at the UvA toward the end of his career. As a historian, Aerts was educated in the 1980s, when deconstructing narratives and making critical analyses reigned supreme.
Yet on Wednesday afternoon, he managed to build tension with his farewell lecture precisely by telling it through a story: that of Lalla Rookh, who died in the Tasmanian capital of Hobart in 1876. Visitors to the farewell lecture speculated in advance who she might be.
2022 book Denkend aan Nederland. On history, nationality and politics
2018 book Thorbecke wants it. Biography of a statesman
2017 professor of Dutch history at the University of Amsterdam
2013 book Land of small gestures
2011 member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)
2003 professor of political history at Radboud University Nijmegen
1997 PhD at the University of Groningen on the 150-year history of the literary magazine De Gids
1957 born in Amsterdam
Who was Lalla Rookh?
“That was the name given by British colonizers to the last woman of Tasmania's indigenous people. Lalla Rookh means ‘tulip cheek’ and is the name of an Indian-Persian princess from an 1817 romantic poem by Irishman George Moore. When Lalla Rookh – which was not her real name - died in 1876, British colonizers organized a sort of state funeral with the intention of marking a ‘clean slate.’ Tasmania was empty and English civilization could begin. Lalla Rookh had it expressly recorded that she wished to be cremated after her death, but nevertheless, her skeleton was displayed in a museum in Hobart until after World War II.”
What do you want to tell with this story?
“The personal story of Lalla Rookh is a snapshot of all kinds of events. On the one hand, there was the colonization process that began in 1804 in Tasmania that wiped out the entire native Tasmanian population within a few decades. On the other hand, there was the eagerness of science to map everything. Where did this enormous interest in the supposedly ‘last Tasmanian inhabitant’ come from?”
“When you ask that question, an incredible story unfolds about a worldwide skull and skeleton robbery, which also happened to Lalla Rookh. In the 19th century, scientists thought they could assess the intelligence and development of humans from their skulls. They also believed this science of skull measurement could provide insight into the hierarchy of peoples and races in relation to each other. Thus began a race to collect human skulls and skeletons from around the world. Thousands if not tens of thousands of skulls and skeletons were stolen in the most outrageous ways to complete the collections of natural history museums.”
“Natural science research on peoples and races began to mix with historical and ethnological research. This produced two narratives at the time. One on how humans relate to extinct species such as Neanderthals and Java Man. And one about the evolution of history: Which peoples are at the foundation of history and which ones are destined to disappear? If you can prove which peoples belong to older times and no longer have the right to exist, that legitimizes their disappearance. The same was true of the indigenous people of Tasmania.”
Surely there was Western domination much earlier than 1876?
“Not in such a systematic way. Earlier there was colonization, massacres, and built-in racism. But it was not until the 18th and 19th centuries that racism became systematic and scientifically based. The term ‘race’ meant little more than ‘species’ until the 18th century. Only in the 19th century did race become biomedically defined and racist theory also began to play a role. The attempt to apply scientific principles to race is a 19th-century invention, often with the best of intentions.”
Has science changed since then?
“To some extent, science has left many 19th-century practices behind. But the Western model of ordering and systematizing is still the norm worldwide. There are essentially no alternative models to the exact sciences that are as diligently engaged in collecting, weighing, describing, counting, measuring, and cataloging as there were in the 19th century.”
“What I want to point out is that this same science is still notoriously bad at reflecting on its own assumptions and built-in biases. You see those dangers, for example, in the way we now train artificial intelligence. You can feed an entire corpus of text to AI, but then you train the algorithm precisely with the biases contained in the texts. You can see this in the surcharge affair where algorithms discriminated. Or on social media where an algorithm determines what we see and can't see. I wanted to warn about that in my farewell lecture.”
Will we look back on this period in 200 years and conclude that Western science is making the same mistakes with AI as it did in the 19th century?
“I'm afraid so, yes. There is so much importance placed on technology: financial, organizational, power... The need to have a look under the hood is never emphasized. But technology is not a shiny road to the future. It is part of power positions and interests that you have to think very carefully about. Knowledge is power and whoever controls the knowledge system has the power.”
“What we have come to do from the West is to control the world's knowledge system with technology. That is why Western science and technology has more power than all other countries because technology has managed to become the only ‘true’ knowledge system. As a historian, I estimate that we will often wonder in bewilderment how science could have allowed this to happen.”
Remieg Aerts can also be heard in a recently published podcast by Historici.nl, the open platform of the Royal Dutch Historical Society and the Huygens Institute. There he talks with Hanco Jürgens of the Germany Institute Amsterdam about his motives as a historian, about his work, and about the question: how do I write a good book? You can listen to the episode here.
In the Bushuis, much recalls the Dutch’ colonial past. Some students are calling for a reconstruction of the building. How should we deal with such issues?
“Critical reflection on the past, especially the colonial past, is very wise. It's good that we have this focus on it now. That does not mean that we should always condemn it a priori or that the university should become a place where no controversy or hurtful or unpleasant feelings of any kind should be allowed to occur. If you start making the university a totally safe place then it is no longer a university, because then no more tension, exchange of views, criticism, discussion, or debate takes place. To sterilize your environment in the context of social safety does not seem wise to me in any way.”
How do you view the enormous focus on colonial history at the UvA?
“It's catching up I guess, isn't it. At some point, there is a new agenda - partly determined by social questions - that determines the themes of research and teaching for a number of years. This does not mean a complete focus, as there is a lot more research happening that has nothing to do with colonial history. But themes such as social security and wokeness now have relatively high emphasis, also at the University of Amsterdam.”
What is the most important lesson from history for you?
“What I have always tried to convey to students is that history is an ironic process in which everything always turns out differently. Lalla Rookh now has a statue in Tasmania and has become an important Australian personality. History makes big who was small and small who was big. In that ironic explanation of history, there is also room for compassion for human failure. It is all just a lot of fiddling, searching, and fussing that we have to make do with. That's the way history is; it's no more orderly than our present society.”
