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52 Ildikó Sz. Kristóf “stades,” or “grades” of the kind of hierarchical and linear history that, for so many philosophers of the Enlightenment, implied the hypothesis of a universal—and stadial—way of development of the human societies of the world. This theory held that human societies would advance through gradual steps of evolution that had been thought to be the same for each of them. They start as “savages,” that is, gathering, fishing, hunting communities; then, as agriculture develops, they enter a “barbarian” stade; then they start forming big political organizations like states with elaborate pagan religions, multiple gods, and huge, ceremonial buildings and sophisticated arts. So in this stade—if it is about a four-stage development—the society becomes “half-civilized,” and finally they reach the top of the hierarchy, or the final stage of “civilization.” This latter has been understood in the European sense, namely, that people move to permanent houses, writing appears, different industries develop, and the number of gods is reduced to one (Harris 1968: 27-35). The geographical images of Raff’s schoolbook seem to convey exactly such a linear and universal history. The individual images could be ordered (some of them are already) in a hierarchical, stadial order of social progress; it is as if they were designed initially to be ordered so. The image of the half-naked, tree-climbing “East-Indian” and the camel-riding African black-skin characters could represent the very beginning (gathering and animal-keeping societies), then would come the North American Indian woman with the fish in her basket and the Lapps with their reindeer (animal-keeper/hunter societies). The Chinese man—in his richly decorated coat and with pagodas in the background—could stand for the “half-civilized stage,” [ill. 14] and the various industries and elements of a “developed” material culture— silkworm breeding, whale hunting (Plate XI, middle section [ills. 14 and 8a]), and sugar production, as well as (western European-style) houses, pavilions, huge ships and firearms—would represent the “end” or “top” of history. A striking contrast between such a beginning and end is represented in the picture of the “Hottentot” family (Plate XIV [ill. 11]) in which one sees, as I mentioned before, an indigenous family standing in front of their simple hut; the people are half-naked and have only a spear, a bow, and an ox (?) at their disposal. In the background of the picture a and Parkinson, published already in 1773), as well as other accounts of the earlier voyages to the Pacific (like that of Byron, Dalrymple, and Bougainville, published between 1768 and 1772, Williams 2004) leave their impact on Raff? It is even more remarkable that the new discoveries have not got a place in the /azer, nineteenth century editions of the schoolbook either, in a period when an increasing number of the travelogues of the “South Sea” was accessible almost all over Europe (Ballantyne 2004). The children who had only Raff’s schoolbook at their disposal to learn about what the world looked like, got to know it as a four-continent entity even until the middle of the nineteenth century. But, considering that Raff's plates provided more of a historical-philosophical than a strictly geographic-empirical representation of the world, the existing image of “East-India”—with its tree-climbing natives of black skin gathering raw fruits—could well have been used, if it were needed, to illustrate the fifth part of the world. And similarly, one of the two existing images of “America” could have been used to represent the South American continent as well.
