<html>
<body>
<br>
<div align="center"><b><i> <br><br>
Modern Times, Rural Places:<br><br>
Seminar Series at MIT<br><br>
</i> <br><br>
Peter Boomgaard<br><br>
</b>Senior Researcher, Royal Netherlands Institute of South East Asian
and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and Professor of Economic and Environmental
History of Southeast Asia, University of Amsterdam<br><br>
<i>"The Man-Eating Tiger a Colonial Myth? Four Centuries of
Confrontation between Humans and Tigers"<br><br>
</i> <br>
</div>
Tigers are almost daily on television. These large, beautiful animals,
with their cuddly cubs are an endangered specious, of which at present
7,000 individuals have survived at the most, while once there were
hundreds of thousands. Some people, therefore, find it hard to believe
that they were ever a threat to humans. And yet stories about man-eating
tigers prior to, let us say, the 1960s abound. Some scholars, therefore
have concluded, that the man-eating tiger must have been a colonial myth.
In this view, the European colonizers legitimized their presence in
"the East" (and the killing of many tigers) by exaggerating the
threat posed by "wild nature", which made their presence as
protectors of the local population necessary. In my talk, I will look at
what we know about hunting and man-eating in India and Indonesia between
1600 and now.<br>
<div align="center"><b> <br><br>
Friday, May 6, 2005<br><br>
2:30 to 4:30 pm<br><br>
MIT, Building E51 Room 095<br><br>
</b> <br><br>
Sponsored by MIT's History Faculty and the Program in Science,
Technology, and Society<br>
For more information or to be put on the mailing list, please contact
Margo Collett at
<a href="mailto:mcollet@mit.edu">mcollett@mit.edu</a><br><br>
For location visit
<a href="http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg" eudora="autourl"><u>http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg<br>
</a></u></div>
</body>
</html>