History
The organization was founded in 1873 after the founding of comparable organizations in France in 1821 (Société de Géographie) and the United Kingdom in 1830 ( Royal Geographical Society). Pieter Johannes Veth was the first chairman of the KNAG. It organized several expeditions to Surinam, islands in the Dutch Indies archipelago, South Africa and even to visit the indigenous tribes in North America. Most expeditions consisted of scientists from different disciplines, a photographer and a naval officer. Sometimes a larger military contingent was necessary if the expedition was travelling to a more dangerous area.
The members of the organization were not just scientists. The political elite and the commercial elite (bankers, factory owners, ship owners and captains of merchant ships) were members. It had an economic agenda as well as a scientific mission.
As Dutch colonies became independent, the work of the KNAG focused less and less on economic issues, and became more and more concerned with scientific questions. The Dutch East Indies became independent in 1949 and Netherlands New Guinea became independent in 1962. The last expedition of the KNAG was in 1959 to Netherlands New Guinea.
Read more about this topic: Royal Dutch Geographical Society
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)