(This is an early account of an observer, neither French n...)
This is an early account of an observer, neither French nor Catholic, who avoided both biases, in describing the various factions of Siamese society, and the promotion of Christianity or both European national interests in Siam.
Engelbert Kaempfer was a German physician and naturalist. He is also known as an explorer who made tours to Russia, Persia, India, South-East Asia, and Japan between 1683 and 1693.
Background
Engelbert Kaempfer was born on September 16, 1651, at Lemgo in the principality of Lippe, Westphalia, Germany. His father, Johannes Kemper (Engelbert later changed the spelling of the family name) was a Lutheran minister, first pastor of the Nicolai church in Lemgo. His mother, Christine Drepper, the daughter of Kemper’s predecessor as pastor, died young; his father’s second wife, Adelheid Pöppelmann, bore him six more children. Kaempfer’s elder brother, Joachim, who studied law in Leiden, later became city mayor of Lemgo.
Education
Kaempfer felt an urge to travel from an early age, and this is reflected to some extent in his schooling. He attended the Latin schools of Lemgo (1665) and Hameln (1667), the Gymnasia of Lüneburg (1668-1670) and Lübeck (1670-1672), and the Athenaeum of Danzig (1672-1674), where his first book, Exercitatio politico de majestatis divisione (1673), was published.
For his university studies, Kaempfer went to Thorn (1674-1676); to Cracow (1676-1680), where he studied languages, history, and medicine, and obtained a master’s degree; and finally to Königsberg (1680-1681), where he studied physics and medicine. Some years later, he was awarded a medical degree at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
After completing his studies, Kaempfer traveled by way of Lemgo to Sweden, where he lived in Uppsala and Stockholm until 1683. His wish to undertake a great journey was fulfilled when he was invited to join the embassy sent by King Charles XI of Sweden to the shah of Persia; Ludwig Fabritius was the ambassador, Kaempfer his secretary and also physician to the embassy. The group left Stockholm in March 1683 and traveled via Helsingfors, Narva, Novgorod, Moscow, and Saratov to Astrakhan, before crossing the Caspian Sea and arriving at Isfahan, capital of Persia, in March 1684.
During the journey through Persia, Kaempfer made several side trips. He climbed Mount Barmach (not identified, but possibly Mount Babadag, northwest of Baku), and visited the “burning earth” (from oil or gas seepage) near Baku and the Apsheron peninsula. Obliged to wait with the embassy for a year and a half before being received at court, Kaempfer used this time to study the Persian language, the geography of Isfahan and its surroundings, and the flora of the country. Wishing to continue his voyage instead of returning with the embassy, he joined the Dutch East India Company and was stationed as a physician at Bandar Abbas, from which he explored the surrounding area. In 1688 and 1689, he served as ship physician traveling between Indian ports.
Kaempfer arrived in Java in October 1689. The following year, he was appointed to accompany the annual voyage to Japan of the East India Company as a physician. He remained in Nagasaki from September 1690 to October 1692 and twice accompanied the chief of the factory at Deshima on his embassy to Edo (now Tokyo). In Nagasaki he made a profound study of Japanese history, geography, customs, and flora. Soon after his return to Java in March 1693 he left for Holland, arriving there in October 1693.
Kaempfer then went to Holland and visited many prominent scientists. In 1694 he returned home to Lemgo, where he settled on the estate “Steinhof” in the neighboring village of Lieme. He intended to spend his remaining years writing about his ten-year travels; unfortunately, these plans were only partly realized. He was soon appointed court physician to Friedrich Adolf, count of Lippe, and the post left him little free time. He held this position until his death in 1716.
Apart from Kaempfer’s doctoral dissertation, which contained observations made during his travels, only one book resulting from his journeys was published during his lifetime Amoenitatum exoticarum (1712). In this work Kaempfer presents his observations on Persia and adjacent countries; information on Japanese paper-making and a brief discussion of Japan; a number of discussions on various topics of natural history; a long chapter on the date palm; and, finally, a catalog of Japanese plants that must have been intended as a prodromus for a more complete flora of Japan. The description of the nearly 500 plants is often brief and cryptic. In most cases, Kaempfer gives the Japanese names, both kun and on readings, and in many cases the Chinese characters of these names. But, because of his orthography of Japanese names and his imperfect rendering of Chinese characters, it is difficult to determine the identity of many plants. This is probably the reason why the work did not attract much attention at the time: Linnaeus in his Speciesplantarum (1753) mentions only a few of them. Attempts at identifying Kaempfer’s plants have been made by Karl Peter Thunberg, J. G. Zuccarini, and the Japanese scientists Ishida Chô and Katagiri Kazuo.
It is regrettable that Kaempfer did not document more of his experiences and observations and that so few of those that were documented appeared in print. But even the small portion of his work that was published is sufficient to insure Kaempfer the gratitude of the Orientalist, and the student of Tokugawa Japan.
Most of his manuscripts and many objects from his collection are preserved in the British Library and the British Museum.
In December 1700, Kaempfer married Maria Sophia Wilstach, who was much younger than he. The marriage, which was far from successful, may have hampered his literary production even more than did his occupation as court physician.
