PRÉSENCES CHINOISE ET EUROPÉENNE

Ann KUMAR

A Swedish View of Batavia in 1783-4 Hornstedt' s Letters

Clas Fredrik Hornstedt U) was born in Linkoping on 10th February 1758. His mother was Charlotta Ell and his father, at that time town secretary and later councillor and mayor, was Olof Hornstedt. Both his father and grandfather represented Linkoping in different sessions of the Swedish parliament, his father in 1769. Clas was educated first by private tutor and then spent four years at Linkoping primary school before attending gymnasium from 1774 to 1777. He then went to Uppsala university, taking the usual theological examination in 1780 and the Philosophy Candidates examination in December 1781. He was particularly interested in natural science and botany and during his university years made a trip to Lapp- marken collecting herbaceous plants and birds. He subsequently journeyed as far as St. Petersburg. After nearly four years of C.P. Thunberg's lectures on anatomy, medicine, and natural science, Hornstedt defended his dissertation on 24 November 1782.

On the 15th of December he left Uppsala for the Indies, on Thunberg's recommendation, to classify the collection of the newly-founded Batavian Society for the Arts and Sciences, an opportunity he owed to a well- established link between Sweden's outstanding natural scientists and the Dutch world of learning. As a young man, Linnaeus (2) had travelled to Lei-