Everything about The Malay Archipelago totally explained
The Malay Archipelago is a book by the British naturalist
Alfred Russel Wallace that chronicles his scientific exploration, during the eight year period
1854 to
1862, of the southern portion of the
Malay Archipelago including
Malaysia,
Singapore, the islands of
Indonesia, then known as the
Dutch East Indies, and the island of
New Guinea. Its full title was
The Malay Archipelago: The land of the orang-utan, and the bird of paradise. A narrative of travel, with sketches of man and nature.
Publication and reception
It was first published in 1869 in two volumes by Macmillan and Company, and was revised through 10 editions with the last published in 1890. It is considered to be one of the most influential books ever written about the Indonesian islands.
Contents
The preface summarizes Wallace’s travels, the thousands of specimens he collected, and some of the results from their analysis after his return to
England. The first chapter describes the
physical geography and
geology of the islands with particular attention to the role of
volcanoes and earthquakes. It also discusses the overall pattern of the flora and fauna including the fact that the islands can be divided, by what would eventually become known as the
Wallace line, into 2 parts, those whose animals are more closely related to those of Asia and those whose fauna is closer to that of Australia. The following chapters then describe in detail the places Wallace visited. Wallace includes numerous observations on the people, their languages, ways of living, and social organization, as well as on the plants and animals found in each location. He talks about the
biogeographic patterns he observes and their implications for
natural history, both in terms of biology (
evolution ) and the geologic history of the region. He also narrates some of his personal experiences during his travels. The final chapter is an overview of the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural divisions among the people who live in the region and speculation about what such divisions might indicate about their history. The book is dedicated to
Charles Darwin.
Influence on later works
Joseph Conrad was very impressed with the
Malay Archipelago, and used it as source material for some of his novels including
Lord Jim. More recently it has influenced a number of books including:
- The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen published in 1996, which discusses Wallace’s Indonesian explorations in the context of the development of the scientific discipline of island biogeography.
- The Spice Islands Voyage by Tim Severin, which was published in 1997, and was subtitled The Quest for Alfred Wallace, the Man Who Shared Darwin's Discovery of Evolution attempts to retrace Wallace's travels.
- Archipelago: The Islands of Indonesia: From the Nineteenth-Century Discoveries of Alfred Russel Wallace to the Fate of Forests and Reefs in the Twenty-First Century, by Gavan Daws and Marty Fujita, published in 1999, which uses Wallace's observations as a baseline of comparison to better understand environmental issues in modern Indonesia.
Further Information
Get more info on 'The Malay Archipelago'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://the_malay_archipelago.totallyexplained.com">The Malay Archipelago Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
