To use “magisterial” and “compendious” about this book may understate the case. Vermeulen’s monograph on the “genesis” of ethnography and ethnology will sit as a large and imposing bookend on any history of anthropology shelf for many years to come. It is hard to give any kind of effective summary of a work involving such a vast cast of intellectuals and such wide historical and geographical range. The outline points, though, are as follows. Modern cultural anthropology (Vermeulen calls it sociocultural anthropology; I don’t have space here to show why I think this is mistaken), inherits its core themes from two approaches developed in the enlightenment: ethnography and ethnology. Gottfried Leibniz (particularly his relationship with Russian emperor Peter the Great) turns out to be a cornerstone, not only in the story of how ethnography became its own type of study, but also how and where it was studied. It was Leibniz who began the program of research in Russia and who emphasized the study of language as definitive in understanding ethnos. Language was crucial for Leibniz as a revealer of reality, hence the varieties of language were crucial revealers of the variants of reality. This is a theme that has never gone away in cultural anthropology.

中文翻译：

---

在博阿斯之前：德国启蒙运动中民族志和民族学的起源

对本书使用“权威”和“简明”可能会低估这种情况。Vermeulen 的关于民族志和民族学“起源”的专着将在未来许多年里作为人类学历史书架上的一个巨大而壮观的书挡。一部涉及如此广泛的知识分子和如此广泛的历史和地理范围的作品，很难给出任何有效的总结。但是，要点如下。现代文化人类学（Vermeulen 称之为社会文化人类学；我没有空间说明为什么我认为这是错误的），其核心主题来自启蒙运动中发展的两种方法：民族志和民族学。Gottfried Leibniz（特别是他与俄罗斯皇帝彼得大帝的关系）被证明是基石，不仅在民族志如何成为它自己的研究类型的故事中，而且在它被研究的方式和地点的故事中。是莱布尼茨在俄罗斯开始了研究计划，并强调语言研究是理解民族的决定性因素。语言对于莱布尼茨来说是至关重要的现实揭示者，因此语言的多样性是现实变体的关键揭示者。这是文化人类学中从未消失的主题。