Lecture | Global Questions Seminar
Orangutans and the Borders of Humanity in the Long Eighteenth Century
- Date
- Friday 25 October 2024
- Time
- Series
- Global Questions Seminar 2024-2025
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.21
Global Questions Seminar
Institute for History
Abstract
To what extent did the debate on a specific specimen, the so-called “orangutan,” contribute to making the Enlightenment global? The orangutan, or “man of the woods,” first entered Europe in the mid-17th century through early medical treatises on casuistry. Its anatomy, behavior, use of tools, and sociability prompted anatomists, naturalists, philosophers, as well as merchants or lawyers to question its nature by comparing it to humans. My paper explores the presence and public display of orangutans in 18th-century Europe through multiple sources, highlighting how these exhibitions reshaped Enlightenment debates on the concept of humanity and its boundaries. The pursuit of orangutans extended beyond anatomical theaters and menageries, following the routes of the triangular trade that brought specimens of both sexes to European cities. The public exhibition of great apes within the context of the slave trade underscored the political dimension of debates about human boundaries, raising critical questions about degrees of humanity and the economic implications of labour.
About the speaker
Silvia Sebastiani is Directrices d’études (Professor) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, where she teaches research seminars on Enlightenment historiography and on the ideology of race in the early modern period. A specialist on the Scottish Enlightenment, she has published extensively on the questions of race, gender, animality, and history-writing, and is the author of The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress (2013), and the co-author, with Jean-Frédéric Schaub, of Race et histoire dans les sociétés occidentales (15e-18e siècle) (2021).
Global Questions Seminar
The motto of the Institute for History’s research programme is ‘Global Questions, Local Sources’. Across all areas and time periods, researchers of the Institute focus on important processes such as migration, colonialism, urbanization, and identity formation.
The ‘Global Questions Seminar’, for which we invite distinguished international colleagues to discuss the interplay between global and local issues from the past, brings all staff members of the Institute for History together.