ABSTRACT
Despite this consistent emphasis on Pfeiffer’s exceptionality as a woman voyaging in exotic climes, few of her achievements as a scientific traveller have been investigated in any detail. As the reviewer in Good Words emphasised, her urge to travel was driven by an intellectual curiosity that fuelled her constant quest for “fresh elds of exploration”.6 Scholars have, admittedly, been swift to recall that the Berlin Geographical Society, the Gesellschaft für Erdkunde, elected her an Honorary Member and that the King of Prussia awarded her the Gold
Medal of Arts and Sciences in 1856, on the advice of Alexander von Humboldt. Scientic statistics also speak for themselves: she brought home an impressive 2500 specimens from her second world voyage alone, some of which now bear the species classication “idae” or “pfeifferi” in recognition of her work.7 But this rehearsal of Pfeiffer’s scientic awards and discoveries does little to clarify how exactly Pfeiffer conceived of her role as an amateur collector, what kinds of creatures she was (un)able to acquire and prepare for onward transport, and how, ultimately, these specimens represent the raw material underpinning some of the most in-uential biological theories of the nineteenth century. Michaela Holdenried has been rare among critics to expatiate on the precise economics of scientic collection – as described in Austrian ministerial council reports from the 1850s regarding the apportionment of funding to science – that increasingly became the nancial motivator for Pfeiffer’s travels and collection activities.8 While a clearer picture of Pfeiffer’s involvement in British, German, and Austrian scientic networks is therefore now beginning to emerge, scholars have still remained remarkably silent about how her travels through the Dutch East Indies contributed to the making of knowledge in the Dutch-speaking scientic community.
