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In European history the Victorian era (Queen Victoria of Britain reigned from 1837 to 1901) is a period full of paradoxes. Industrialisation and urbanisation contrast with a romantic yearning for Nature, and with the study of provincial folklore in a search of the genuine 'folk spirit'. Secular systems such as Liberalism, Socialism, modern scientific theories and so on, compete with Christian fundamentalism. Unbridled imperialism abroad goes hand in hand with a tentative democratisation at home. It is also the golden age of newspapers and journals. News about daring explorers can always rely on a large reading public, whether these travellers are visiting the remains of cities in Central Asian deserts, or attempting to solve such geographical puzzles as the source of the river Nile. Dutch newspaper readers once eagerly followed the news trickling in about the extraordinary journeys of discovery being made by the war reporter Juan Maria Schuver (Amsterdam 1852 - Sudan 1883). From 1880 until his dramatic death in 1883, Schuver travelled in south-east Sudan, and the area bordering Ethiopia. Schuver long ago disappeared into oblivion, unjustly, since the notebooks held in the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden (hereafter RMV - Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde) bear witness to a man best typified as someone who threw himself at life with a profound contempt for death. The Schuver Collection, acquired by the Museum in 1947, comprises ethnographic objects that not only illustrate the material culture Schuver encountered; in some cases they may also constitute the only remaining evidence of that culture. All the more reason, then, for extending our acquaintance with this Dutch adventurer and collector. |
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