The Malay Archipelago

Sulawesi has long fascinated biologists who have studied it because of its strange and enigmatic biota. Alfred Russel Wallace was the first to give an in-depth description of its distinct animals, and published a popular account in The Malay Archipelago . Wallace’s personal qualities are apparent from the account of his travels given in The Malay Archipelago . The Malay Archipelago , published seven years after his return to England, was Wallace’s account of the eight years he spent exploring and collecting in the region and was his most commercially successful book. Wallace’s working background as a surveyor was also important in his development as a self-reliant, resourceful and practical man. Sulawesi appeared enigmatic to Wallace because its highly endemic and impoverished fauna was out of place with respect to its location. Wallace was a man of limited formal education and no social standing in a class-obsessed society who managed to rise to a pre-eminent intellectual position within the Victorian scientific community.