Carl Wilhelm Rosset

Carl Wilhelm Rosset
File:Rosset, Carl Wilhelm.jpg
Born	1851
Residence	11 Bailey Street, Bedford Square
Occupation	medical explorer photographer collector
Society Membership membership corresponding member elected_AI 1886.11.23

Notes

House Notes

1886.11.09 proposed for election at the next meeting - as a corresponding Member

Notes From Elsewhere

Explorer and collector. Travelled to Maldives in mid-1880s and to the interior of Indochina (modern-day Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), beyond direct French control, where he identified various tribal groupings. Published maps, photographs and travelogues in various journals. [BM]

Carl Wilhelm Rosset was a doctor and explorer, born in Freiburg, Wurttemberg, Germany in 1851, who took photographs and collected artefacts and specimens while staying in Male’ from 29 October until 21 December 1885.
Most of Rosset’s photos were probably destroyed in Berlin in 1945 at the end of World War II.
The article below is Rosset’s full English account of his visit published by The Graphic in 1886, plus coloured additions from a shorter but more frank and revealing German language article by Rosset in Illustrierte Zeitung in 1887, translated here by the Swedish Maldivian history researcher Lars Vilgon.
Rosset’s acquisitions, collected with the help of the leading minister Atireege Ibrahim Didi (Abrahim Deedee in the article), formed the major part of displays of Maldivian products, manufactures and cultural items at exhibitions in London, Berlin and Chicago.
Rosset also published articles about Maldives with the Zoological Society of London and the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

The preparations for my visit to these islands were commenced in the spring of 1884, as it had been my intention to proceed thither in October of that year; but a combination of accidents prevented my departure from Colombo at the appointed time, and I had therefore to wait 12 months for another opportunity.

This delay was unavoidable owing to the fact that the high sea which prevails around the islands during the southwest monsoon (i.e. from June to September) makes landing there a rather dangerous matter, especially if one is cumbered with boxes of instruments and stores. It was necessary for me to arrive there soon after the setting in of the end of the north-east monsoon about the middle of October, so as to have as long a spell of fine weather as possible.

Seeing that the Maldives were a dependency of the government of Ceylon before that colony passed into the hands of the English in 1796, it cannot but be a matter of some surprise that the information possessed concerning them should be of such meagre description.

The Maldivians have long been known as a peaceful and hospitable race, though shy and suspicious with strangers until they have satisfied themselves of the latter’s friendly intentions: they are not too conservative to oppose the adoption of new ideas if these are properly introduced: nor are they deficient in commercial aptitude.

One cause of the islands having been so much neglected is undoubtedly to be found in the bad reputation acquired by the climate: and another is probably a certain reluctance on the part of the Ceylon government to meddle, or appear to meddle, with the affairs of the Maldivians.

I am not by any means the first European who has paid a visit to the Maldives; but I can justly claim to be the first who has undertaken a systematic exploration of the group, and who for that purpose has taken up abode his abode among and associated with the people.

By the courtesy of the English government I had been given a passage in the steamer Ceylon, the vessel in which Captain Wilding makes his periodical visits to the lighthouses of Minicoy [just north of Maldives in the Laccadives] and the Basses [Great Basses Reef, located around eight miles off the southeast coast of Sri Lanka]. It was arranged that, as she was to proceed to Bombay to have some repairs effected, I should be left on the way at Male’, and that she should return and fetch me away in two months’ time.

At length, on the morning of the 25th October, 1885, the Ceylon steamed out of Colombo harbour and shaped her course for Male’, the capital of the Maldive group, situated on the island of the same name, at the southern end of North Male’ atoll, exactly in the centre of the group.

Bat named after him. Rosset thick-thumbed myotis myotis rosseti oey. .. It seems likely that it is named after C.W. Rosset, who sold or presented a specimen to the Natural History Institute (a commercial institute) in Frankfort-am-Main in 1889. Rosset probably collected the specimen himself, as he is known to have traveled in the regions where it occurs. He undertook a three-year-long journey in the Far East, including Indochina. On this journey he traveled on a ship called Ceylon from Colombo and was able to go ashore in the Maldive Islands in 1885. They myotis is found in Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand.

Publications

External Publications

'The Wild Peoples of Farther India', Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York, Vol. 25, (1893), pp.289-303.

House Publications

'On the Maldive Islands, more especially treating of Male Atol', The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol 16 (1887) pp.164-174

Related Material Details

Other Material

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