Brovtsyn, N.P.: Materials for an Anthropology of Ethiopia. The Abyssinians of the Shewa Province

Title

Materialy dlia antropologii Efiopii. Abissintsy provintsii Shoa, Sankt-Peterburg 1909

Materials for an Anthropology of Ethiopia. The Abyssinians of the Shewa Province

Keywords

Summary

The volume consists of Brovtsyn’s dissertation, written in order to obtain the title of doctor of medicine. It is an anthropological study of the inhabitants of the Shewa province in Ethiopia, equipped with tables reporting measurements of men, women and children, as well as by a list of sources. Although this is a treatise suitable for an audience of specialists (doctors or anthropologists), the first part of the book contains more discursive chapters on the geography, history and ethnography of the country. Information is also provided on the most common diseases in Ethiopia, and on the activities of the Russian hospital founded in Addis Ababa.

Bio

Nikolai Brovtsyn was a Russian military doctor. Born in the Novgorod governorate in a family of the hereditary nobility, he enrolled in the Imperial Military Medical Academy (1885), graduating in 1890 and immediately starting to serve in various regiments. He was dispatched three times to Ethiopia (1896, 1897, 1903), taking part in the Russian Red Cross mission and in the first Russian diplomatic mission. He ended up living there for a few years. In addition to writing his dissertation on Ethiopia, he also gathered an ethnographic collection, which is still held by the Kunstkamera. He was decorated many times for his services, for instance he received the Order of Saint Stanislaus (second class, 1899), the Order of Saint Anna (second class, 1902), the Order of Saint Vladimir (fourth class, 1905).

Sources

N. Brovtsyn, Curriculum vitae, in N. Brovtsyn, Materialy dlia antropologii Efiopii, Sankt-Peterburg 1909, p. 367-368;

M. Rait, Russkie ekspeditsii v Efiopii v seredine XIX – nachale XX vv. i ikh etnograficheskie materialy, “Afrikanskii etnograficheskii sbornik”, I, Moskva 1956, p. 220-281;

G. Tsypkin, Russkie mediki v Efiopii. U istokov otnoshenii dvukh stran, “Novaia i noveishaia istoriia”, 2017, 4, p. 109-116;

P. Krainiukov, V. Abashin, Russkie voennye vrachi v Abissinii, “Klinicheskaia meditsina”, 2023 (101), 4-5, p. 252-258.

A.F.