The Representation of the Australian Aborigines in Text and Picture: Dr. Med. Pál Almási Balogh (1794-1863) and the Birth of the Science of Anthropology in Central Europe/Hungary

The article discusses a manuscript entitled Az ember Australiában (The Man in Australia) found in one of the collections of private files in the University Library of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Preserved in the miscellaneous files of Pál Almási Balogh, a Hungarian physician active mostly during the first half of the 19th century, and written in Hungarian, this writing describes the bodily structure, the way of life and the geographical environment of the Australian aborigines. Written probably around 1835 and divided into chapters like “Religion”, “Habitation”, “Way of life”, “Marriage”, “Superstition”, “Inclinations”, “Dress”, and “Language,” the manuscript seems however never to have been published. The author identifies this writing of Almási Balogh as the first scientific, ethnographical/anthropological monograph ever written in Hungary on the native inhabitants of the fifth continent, and she analyzes its content according to both its textual-philological and visual-figural register. According to her results, the manuscript was compiled from the works of Jules Dumont d’Urville (1790-1842), David Collins (1756-1810), George Barrington (1755-1804), Alan Cunningham (1791-1839), James Cook (1728-1779), and perhaps some other Western European explorers and natural historians of Australia. And, as for its visual register, it relied heavily on the illustrations of Voyage pittoresque autour du monde of Dumont d’Urville, published in different languages in Western Europe from 1834-1835 on.