Koropchevskii, D.A.: People. Ethnographic Essays. Black People: Africa

Title

Liudi. Etnograficheskie ocherki. Chernye liudi: Afrika, Moskva 1886

People. Ethnographic Essays. Black People: Africa

Keywords

Summary

According to the author’s preface, this should have been the first of five instalments aimed at popularising knowledge on world population, especially from an ethnographic point of view. The other four volumes would have covered Oceania, Asia, the Americas and Europe (with a special focus on its rural population). The editor, Vladimir Marakuev, stressed the scientific reliability of Koropchevskii’s treatise, distancing him from authors of adventure novels like Mayne Reid and Verne. The essay is divided into ten chapters. The first one deals with the discovery of Africa by European travellers and explorers, while the second one provides information on the geography, climate and nature of the continent. In the third chapter Koropchevskii offers an overview of the African “races” (rasy), their “character” and way of life. The following chapters deal with specific peoples, defined as: Negroes, Caffres, Hottentots, Fula People (fulakhi), Hamites, Malagasy and the other population of Madagascar. Koropchevskii describes their physical characteristics, way of life, and social structure. Five drawings of local “types” are also included in the book, as well as an ethnographic map of the continent, based on F. Ratzel’s studies.

Bio

Dmitrii Koropchevskii was a Russian author, translator, editor and ethnographer. Born in Moscow into a noble family, he graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University in 1863, becoming interested in anthropology and ethnography thanks to professor Grigorii Shchurovskii. It was with the purpose of popularising this knowledge that he became the editor of the journals “Znanie”, “Slovo”, and “Novoe obozrenie”. He published articles, novels and short stories also with the pseudonym “G. Taranskii”, and translated several Western authors like E. Tylor, G. de Maupassant, J. Lubbock, F. Ratzel, whose ideas strongly influenced him. From 1899 he started to teach ethnography and anthropogeography at various institutions, including Saint Petersburg University. A member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, he served as a chairman of the Russian Anthropological Society from 1899 to 1902.

Sources

D. Klements, Dmitrii Andreevich Koropchevskii (nekrolog), “Ezhegodnik Russkogo antropologicheskogo obshchestva”, 1905, 1, p. 256-258;

E. Rogalina, “Koropchevskii, Karapchevskii Dmitrii Andreevich”, in Russkie pisateli. 1800-1917, t. 3, Moskva 1994, p. 85-86.

A.F.

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