In 1873 the German naturalist A.B. Meyer spent five months in New Guinea. He had expected -bloodthirsty and untamed savages- and was amazed to find -men of milder customs-. His compatriot Otto Finsch returned from a voyage through Hawaii, Micronesia, New Zealand and Torres Strait declaring Germany s most respected anthropologists wrong. Human races could not be neatly distinguished: they -merge into one another to such an extent that the difference between Europeans and Papuans becomes completely unimportant-. This richly interdisciplinary book explores the transformative impacts of personal...