The period of his life for which he is best known began in 1871 when he decided that the study of primitive people was his vocation. Travelling in the Russian steam corvette, The Vityaz, he set out for New Guinea to examine the ‘relationship of the Papuans to other races’. He was landed at Astrolabe Bay on die part of the northern coast which was later for many years to bear his name. He brought with him two servants, Bill Olsen, a Swede whom he came to regard as a broken reed, and a Niue Islander whom he knew as ‘Boy’.

Maclay’s first sojourn in New Guinea lasted nearly sixteen months and is known mainly through his diaries, first published in an English translation by C. L. Sentinella in 1975. He soon demonstrated his exceptional courage: when confronted by a hostile group in a village, he took a mat, lay down and went to sleep. He lived apart from villages and strictly forbade any villagers to enter his house. He himself believed, and other evidence supports his belief, that people regarded him as taaram tamo, the Moon Man, who was a supernatural being. While he does not seem actively to have encouraged this view, he did not dare to admit to the death of ‘Boy’ and indicated that he had flown somewhere over the horizon. During his stay he suffered great hardship through malaria and other diseases and towards the end was very short of food. He paid two further visits to New Guinea, of fifteen months in 1876 and of ten days in 1883.

At other times he travelled far. He stayed for some months with the governor-general of the Netherlands East Indies and made a short but eventful trip to the southern coast of Dutch New Guinea. In search of ‘Papuans’, he made two exploratory journeys in Malaya where he collected the first substantial information. about negrito tribes of the eastern Malay Peninsula. In 1878 he went to Australia where scientific societies and leading social clubs opened their doors to him. He organised a zoological station in Sydney – the building is extant – where he carried out his scientific research. In 1884 he married, against strong opposition from her family, the daughter of Sir John Robertson of Sydney, a leading politician. He had had little to do with women – he was involved in a thwarted love affair with the daughter of the Dutch governor-general – but the marriage appears to have been a happy one; his wife’s devotion matching what would now be regarded as his male chauvinist attitude towards the role of women. After nearly twelve years’ absence, he returned to Russia and was treated as a hero; but after fetching his family from Australia, he died in 1888.

One of the major concerns of his life was to ensure that the peoples of the New Guinea coast and other undisturbed areas should be spared the degradation which would arise from uncontrolled European contact. At first he sought to prevent any contact at all. Then with boundless self-confidence and naïveté, he thought that their salvation lay in his having a dictatorial if benevolent role in relation to them. To suppress slavery and other evils in the part of Dutch New Guinea which he had visited, he sought Javanese soldiers, a gunboat and absolute authority for himself for a year. When the prospect of annexation of New Guinea by a major power loomed near, the author skilfully describes the remarkable gymnastics in which Maclay was involved to try to protect his people. No longer seeking to maintain their isolation, he put forward his ‘Maclay Coast Scheme’. With himself in administrative control, self-supporting European settlers would be served by Papuan labourers. Hitherto warring villagers would unite ‘for the common purpose of mutual interest and judicious legislation’. The villagers would advance towards civilisation and a mixed-race population emerge. At the same time as he was advocating a British protectorate over New Guinea, he was secretly seeking a site for a Russian naval base and at the end of his life he was promoting a scheme for a Russian colony.

From his early days when he enjoyed the benefactions of his rich friend, Prince Meshchersky, and the patronage of the head of the Russian navy ministry, Grand Duke Konstantin, he won the friendship and support of powerful and distinguished people. He had, for example, personal access to the tsar. This support enabled him to carry out his plans in spite of his chronic poverty.

Miclouho-Maclay can only be understood if he is seen as a zealot in the cause of science. In this cause he exhibited ruthlessness and some lack of scruple, especially in his search for money. He bullied his mother, who was not well off, into giving him money and misled the Russian Geographical Society about his intentions. While he insisted that less advanced peoples should be allowed to remain autonomous, he maintained his right as a European to command their obedience and he had great success in bending them to his will. In Malaya, however, he came near to a shooting, a Chinese sawyer who would not obey him. He was a true solitary. Whether a student in Germany or living in the wilds of New Guinea, he preferred to be alone. If he loved mankind in the abstract and was given love and trust, he was less sympathetic in his contact with individuals.

Ironically, in view of his fanatical belief in the value of his scientific work, little of it stood the test of time. His research into the vertebrate brain had little value and his main zoological contribution lay in his research into monotreme body temperatures. He has continued to be the principal authority on plants used by the people of the Astrolabe Bay area. Early in his research he decided to concentrate on facts rather than theories. Throughout his life he remained ambivalent about the major aspects of Darwin’s work. The publication of his explorations came too late because the areas concerned were already well known to the outside world.

Malinowski said. he was a ‘new type’ of investigator who lived among the people whom he studied and his ethnographic work was valuable. Webster is perhaps overcritical of his failure to understand their social and leadership structures and belief systems. ‘Anthropology ‘as a discipline was in its infancy and Maclay was not in touch with anthropological thought in England and America. More important, although he is said earlier to have had a gift for learning languages, his knowledge of the Astrolabe Bay languages was limited. Not living in a village and spending long periods alone, his opportunities for conversation were restricted.

I find little, to criticise in this admirable and well-produced account of this ‘tiny nervous man’ who, for all his faults, possessed a certain nobility of character. At times I could have wished that questions raised had received clearer answers, although these were sometimes to be found in foot­notes. The book is well researched and the author clearly describes the nature and extent of her sources. Unhappily, Maclay’s widow followed his instructions and destroyed much of his collection of papers immediately after he died.

Apart from being a fascinating study of the life of a remarkable man, it throws considerable light on the frontier in the Pacific area between the agents of European civilisation and members of technologically backward races during the second half of the nineteenth century. It also demonstrates that Europe still formed one society, and the ease with which an educated man could move within the different parts of it. It is recommended equally to the historian and the general reader.