Andrew Goldie [electronic resource] : the experience of Empire

Andrew Goldie arrived in New Guinea in March 1876 to collect plants for the London nurseryman B.S. Williams. By 1877 he had separate arrangements with Ferdinand von Mueller, the Victoria Government Botanist, and E.P. Ramsay of the Australian Museum and was collecting all kinds of scientific specimens. He established a trade store at Port Moresby where he remained until poor health forced him to leave in December 1890. By then he had acquired an immense knowledge of the people of the southeast coast, having lived among them longer than any white man. Although little has been written about Goldie, he is recognised as perhaps the most important early commercial collector of New Guinea natural history specimens and ethnology. He also built-up a successful trading business at Port Moresby based on his collecting and his career allows a direct line to be drawn from the transactions of natural scientists to fully blown mercantile colonialism. This chapter includes, in an appendix, an annotated bibliography of scientific descriptions of Andrew Goldie’s specimens up to 1901, illustrating the significance of his contribution to natural history.