William Louis Abbott in Madagascar: Revisiting Archival and Museum Resources of a Smithsonian Naturalist from the 1890s

AbstractThis article introduces an important group of ethnographic, biological, and unpublished archival materials deriving from two expeditions to Madagascar by American naturalist William Louis Abbott (1860–1936). The first was from February to September 1890; the second from January to July 1895 when Abbott rushed back to Madagascar not only to collect for the Smithsonian but also to join the Merina in their unsuccessful war of independence against the encroaching French government. Beyond summarizing localities he visited and the current organization and usefulness of his collections for research, the article attempts to interpret archival records to assess Abbott's collecting focus, biases, and purposes; his perspectives on contemporaneous events in Madagascar; and also the role that “naturalist” collectors such as Abbott played within the history of anthropology and of museums. Ethnographic information is embedded not only within the ethnographic collections but also within associated biological collections and archives. [Madagascar, William Louis Abbott, naturalist, ethnographic collections, Smithsonian Institution]