The Monkey of Humanity

How European Drawings of Orangutans and Indigenous People of the Malay Peninsula Propogate European Colonialism

In the TV series Game of Thrones, Lord Varys says, “power resides where men believe it to reside.”  European explorers from countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, and Portugal took advantage of the illusion of power, often representing indigenous people as lesser than their European counterparts. Specifically, in drawings throughout the late 18th century, Europeans viewed non-white people as closer to apes, hence uncivilized. Prior to photography, audio recording, and quick transcontinental transportation, local Europeans relied on drawings and journals from European explorers to understand the world beyond their immediate borders. So the question then becomes, how do Western European’s representation of observational drawings relating to apes and indigenous people propagate Europe’s colonial endeavors in Southeast Asia in the late 18th century?

The colored engraving “The Orang-Outang carrying off a Negro girl” (left) is an example of how Europeans impose their impression of indigenous people. In the image, the orangutan figure is quite similar to the girl. Both have similar elongated limbs and similar facial features. Although orangutans are notably more similar to humans physically than other species (albeit the gorilla and chimpanzee), orangutans have much shorter legs than their torso and protruding snout. There is a possibility that the similarities are due to observational error, but considering other works by the German artist Johann Eberhard Ihle, where he was capable of making hyper-realistic portraiture, making such proportional mistakes seems unlikely. No literature seems to exist about the context surrounding why the “Orang-Outang” image was created or whether Johann Eberhard Ihle ever made it to the Malay Peninsula where orangutans reside. Assuming he did visit these regions, the mistaken proportions could be correlated to Ihle imposing his beliefs onto his observations resulting in the inaccurate drawing. If not, the drawing may reflect how local European perceives orangutans and indigenous with condescension—a quality typical of European explorers at that time. 

However, this image portrays a clear power dynamic between the orangutan and indigenous people from the Malay Peninsula. Here, the orangutan is capturing the girl as opposed to the humans capturing the orangutan. Although the man on the right has a bow and arrow aiming at the orangutan, the pose is more of a threat. Realistically, if the orangutan were to be shot, the girl would fall as well. Thus, the man cannot shoot the arrow and is subject to the orangutan’s decision, holding power over the scenario. However, the credibility of this image as an observation is flawed yet again. In fact, orangutans are notability unhostile, hostility being reserved to other apes such as chimpanzees and gorillas. The image’s untruthful implications of orangutans holding some dominance over natives suggest a hierarchy where indigenous people are viewed as lesser than whites and lesser than or equal to orangutans. 

The title further “others,” the humans of the image. Not only are these people being correlated to orangutans, but the word “Negro” highlights their skin color that the white audience does not share. “Negro” inaccurately categorizes people from the Malay Peninsula as being a part of a larger group. “Negro,” in common tongue, refers to people with black skin, particularly those of African descent. However, darker skin tones on the Malay Peninsula are indigenous tribes like the Orang Asli, not migrants from Africa. Thus, using “Negro” homogenizes people despite distinctive cultures, reducing the cultural identity in European narrative to affirming the racial grouping “white” for Europeans and “black” as the other.  For a local European, the recordings from European-led explorations serve as the sole evidence to understanding the world beyond their observable present, thus becoming the premises that base all future interpretations of the “Negro” world. The evidence is further affirmed by lines like “Published on the act directs,” which emphasize the publications in accordance with law. So, when news of colonial endeavors arise, European citizens can easily justify or be ignorant of the exploitation of non-white indigenous people, for their understanding of these people is more comparable to apes than to white Europeans. 

Works such as “The Orang-Outang carrying off a Negro girl” are useful not for their objective reality, but for understanding the biases that influence the work and how the work influences and biases the viewer. The accumulation of such works creates a positive feedback loop where the biased observations affirmed by governmental laws inform the cultural lens, which further anchors future works in this collective consciousness. As a result, an ethnocentric identity is formed that informs how society functions. In the case of Europe, specifically the West, this ethnocentric identity enabled racist colonial endeavors.

Bibliography

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Game of Thrones. 2012. “What is Dead May Never Die.” HBO. 52:00. April 15. 

Ihle, Johann-Eberhard, and Chapman, J. An Orang-Utan Carrying a Girl into a Tree as a Man Shoots Arrows from below. Coloured Engraving by J. Chapman, ca. 1795, after J.B. Ihle. Published as the Act directs, May 1st 1795. Engraving, with watercolour ;, platemark 19 x 12.3 cm. <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/">Wellcome Collection</a>. https://jstor.org/stable/community.24847340

“Johann Eberhard Ihle under related objects,” The British Museum. Accessed September 30, 2022. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG32520

Kaplan, Gisela T., and Lesley J. Rogers. The Orangutans: Their Evolution, Behavior, and Future. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Pub., 2000. 

Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “Negro,” accessed September 30, 2022, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Negro

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