RGS Archive
Bertha and Max Henry Ferrars, 1890-1899
The Society holds 467 half-plate glass negatives taken between 1890 and 1900 depicting the people of Burma by Max and Bertha Ferrars. Max Ferrars, after passing the entrance exam for the Imperial East India Forestry Service, served the British Colonial authorities in India for 25 years. He married Bertha Hensler and later appointed himself First Deputy of the Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. Max and Bertha moved to Freiburg, Germany where he lectured at the university from 1899 to 1921.
The couple visited Burma during the 1890s. Their photographs were among the first to document the people and landscapes of the country. An illustrated book entitled Burma by Max and Bertha was published in 1900 and contained 455 images of the country, along with in-depth descriptions of the Burmese way of life, from marriage to manners and customs, to handicrafts and painting, to games and sports. The often stylised format of the posed photographs present their subjects in a ‘picturesque’ form popular with European travellers to the region in the period. By comparison, this photograph provides us with a documentary record of deliberate forest fires created at the time as local resistance against colonial teak production.