theoretical racism in late-victorian anthropology, 1870-1900

Theoretical Racism in Late-Victorian Anthropology, 1870-1900Author(s): Douglas LorimerSource: Victorian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Spring, 1988), pp. 405-430Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3828098 .

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Douglas Lorimer

THEORETICAL RACISM IN LATE- VICTORIAN ANTHROPOLOGY, 1870-1900*

THE CRITIQUE OF SCIENTIFIC RACISM THAT DEVELOPED FROM THE 1930S

through the 1950s still shapes much of our understanding of nineteenth- century racist thought, and consequently our view of Victorian racism is in some ways distorted. The mid-twentieth-century assault on racist doctrines challenged the scientific standing of racialist theories, and suggested that this ideology of racial inequality owed its development and strength to the activi- ties of Victorian scientists. The emphasis upon the role of science in creating a set of false and pernicious doctrines led to a historical quest for the origins of scientific racism and for the "pseudo-scientists" who propagated these theories.

This concern with origins means that much of the study of Victorian racist theory has concentrated on the 1850s and '60s, when a fierce debate occurred between defenders of the orthodox theory of monogenesis and advocates of polygenesis. Both schools of thought followed the established practice of classifying the varieties of man by racial type, and both assumed that a hierarchy of races existed with Europeans at the top of the scale. The theory of common origins or monogenesis was compatible with Christian teaching, and its leading advocates had links with humanitarian movements for the ab- olition of slavery and the protection of aboriginal peoples. The polygenists advanced a more extreme racialist position by placing greater emphasis on the differences between racial groups, and by arguing that anatomical comparisons proved that races were species with separate origins and distinct, bio- logically fixed, unequal characteristics. In Great Britain the principal creator of polygenetic theory was Robert Knox (1791-1862), whose Races of Man appeared in 1850. 1 His ideas gained a public platform when his follower James Hunt (1833-69) founded the Anthropological Society of London in 1863 and

The author is indebted to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and to Wilfrid Laurier University for financial assistance for the travel and research for this paper.

Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850 (London: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 377-382; Michael Banton, The Idea of Race (London: Tavistock, 1977), pp. 46-48; Mi- chael D. Biddis, "The Politics of Anatomy: Dr. Robert Knox and Victorian Racism," Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 69 (1976), 245-250.

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used its meetings and publications to proclaim the superiority of Anglo-Saxons over all other, and especially over nonwhite, peoples. 2

Existing histories of racism tend to exaggerate the impact of mid- Victorian polygenist typologies. Evidence for the survival of polygenesis after Darwin rests less on British scientific works than upon French authors not so subject to the new evolutionary orthodoxy and American sources more at- tached to polygenesis because of its utility for defending white supremacy. 3 For developments within the British scientific community, the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland provides a year-by-year record of the thinking of those scientists who claimed to have a special interest in the study of race. The Journal's contents serve as a means to avoid preselecting authors by reputation, and provide some indication of which authorities were important in shaping late-Victorian anthropologists' ideas. Furthermore, information about the Institute's membership and organization permits some analysis of the background of subscribers to the Journal, and al- lows some insight into the social as well as the intellectual context of late- Victorian racist thinking.

In comparison to the scholarly attention paid to the boisterous de- bates of the 1850s and especially the 1860s, the more subdued scientific deliberations after 1870 have received much less notice. Yet the last thirty years of the nineteenth century saw significant developments in scientific thinking about race. Furthermore, these later developments have closer affinities to the racism of the post-1918 period than do the racial typologies of the 1850s and '60s. A study of Victorian scientists' ideas about race after 1871 (the year of the publication of Darwin's Descent of Man and of the formation of the An- thropological Institute) also provides a clearer understanding of the social and political context which fostered scientific racist ideas.

I

The Anthropological Institute was formed in 1871 out of the reunion of the Ethnological and Anthropological Societies of London (it became the

2 J. W. Burrow, Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1970), pp. 118-136; George W. Stocking, Jr., "What's in a Name? The Origins of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1837-71)," Man, n.s., 6 (1971), 369-390; Ronald Rainger, "Race, Politics and Science: The Anthropological Society of London in the 1860s," Victorian Stud- ies 22:1 (Autumn 1978), 51-70; Douglas A. Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians: English Atti- tudes to the Negro in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978), pp. 137-161. The continuity in scientific racism from the 1850s onwards is emphasized by Christine Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1971), pp. 1-28; Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800-1960 (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1982).

3 For examples see George W. Stocking, Jr., "The Persistence of Polygenist Thought in Post-Darwinian Anthropology," in Race, Culture and Evolution (New York: Free Press, 1971), pp. 42-68; Stepan, chap. 4.

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THEORETICAL RACISM, 1870-1900

Royal Anthropological Institute in 1907). As a consequence of this amalgamation the Institute began with an inflated membership of 585 fellows, but soon a more rigorous maintenance of membership lists reduced the size to between 440 and 480 fellows for most of the 1870s and '80s. 4 A further decline in numbers in the 1890s reduced the society to 363 members by 1900 (JAI 30 [1900], 1-12). Only a minority of members, from twenty to fifty in the 1890s, attended meetings in London. 5

The membership lists, which were in effect lists of subscribers to the Journal, gave the addresses for almost all of the fellows, and for one third of the names included some additional information about social rank or occupation (RAI, A20 and A31 [membership lists]). Of the 638 addresses on the membership lists for 1879 and 1881-85, just under half were for London, 35 percent for the "provinces," and the remainder for overseas locations (chiefly the colonies and particularly India, with over 40 subscribers). The 203 members for whom social position, education, or occupation was listed included 33 titled gentlemen and 14 members of Parliament. There were more than 20 members of the Royal Society, and at least 70 of the fellows belonged to one or more of the other learned societies, with the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Geological Society being the most common, followed by the Linnean and Zoological Societies. Of the members whose professional affilia- tion was given, the most numerous were the 63 medical doctors, followed by 43 army officers, 36 scientists or other academics, and 30 clergymen. Forty percent of the army officers listed colonial or Indian addresses, and about one-third of these served as doctors. Most of the handful of naval officers in the Institute were also medical men. If the military officers are combined with those who served in the foreign, colonial, and civil services, some 74 fellows, or over one-third of those whose occupation is known, were em-

ployed by some branch of the government. The most apparent change between the early membership lists and

that of 1900 was the decline in the number of army officers and clergy (to less than 10 in each category). Although the total number of members had de- clined by 1900, the place of the clergy and military had been taken up to some extent by an increase, to 44 members, of academics and scientists affili- ated with colleges, universities, or museums. Most of this group had training in medicine or biological science. This change in membership reflected the decline in the participation of interested amateurs and the growth of specialized academic and scientific professions by the end of the century.

4 "Report of the Council for 1871," Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (hereafter cited asJAI) 1 (1871-72), 379. The number of members was given in each annual report.

5 Royal Anthropological Institute Archives (hereafter RAI), A14 (1), "Attendance books, Ordinary meetings, 1892- ." I would like to thank the Institute for permission to cite archive materials in this paper.

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The analysis of the membership of the Anthropological Institute holds few surprises. As one might expect, the Institute was dominated by the London-based professional middle class, and within this group a significant minority had some training in medicine or the biological sciences. As indi- cated by the remarks of several of the Institute's presidents, these professionals believed in social advance by merit and not by patronage, but at the same time they saw social rank as indicative of inherited potential. Thus they believed in the value of education, but thought that the existing social system protected the aristocracy from the process of social selection and worried that excessive democracy would swamp the inherited ability of the educated middle class with the mediocrity of the masses. 6 The combination of these elitist assumptions with a strong orientation toward medicine and natural science makes it hardly surprising that these late-Victorian members of the Institute, a significant number of whom had military or colonial connections, should look for biological explanations for the geopolitical reality of the expansion of European dominion over nonwhite peoples.

Nevertheless, the correlation between the social background and academic training of members and a propensity toward scientific racism is not quite so straightforward as it may seem. The feuding between the Ethnolo- gical and Anthropological Societies in the 1860s, and the attempt by Hunt and others to apply the racist ideas of Knox's anthropology to political topics of the day, have been identified as the birth-pangs of scientific anthropology in Great Britain. The calmer deliberations of the 1870s and '80s reflected, then, the successful institutionalization of anthropology within the British scientific community (Stocking, "What's in a Name?" pp. 369-390; Rainger, pp. 51-70). It would be premature, however, to think that this step marked the arrival of anthropology as a professional, independent discipline. As late as 1900 only three fellows held teaching positions as ethnologists or anthropologists. In contrast, no less than seven Institute members held chairs in anatomy. 7 For even the most active members of the Institute anthropology was not their profession but their avocation.

In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, there were two groups of amateurs in the Institute. On the one hand, there were those interested in prehistoric archaeology and in exotic cultures. They tended to have little technical training in human biology, but often had some personal expe-

6 See presidential addresses by Francis Galton, JAI 15 (1885-86), 497-499, and 18 (1888-89), 406- 407; and by A. Pitt-Rivers, JAI 11 (1881-82), 507. See also John Beddoe, Memories of Eighty Years (Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1910), p. 312.

7 JAI 30 (1900), 1-12. See also Meyer Fortes, "Social Anthropology at Cambridge since 1900," in R. Damell, ed., Readings in the History of Anthropology (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 429- 433, and especially George W. Stocking, Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1987), pp. 257-269. I completed my research prior to the publication of Stocking's important study, yet we seem to have reached similar conclusions about the professional status of late-Victorian anthropology.

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rience with alien societies as travellers or officials posted overseas. For the large contingent of clergymen, army officers, and colonial officials who fell within this category, the Anthropological Institute fulfilled a purpose like that of the Royal Geographical Society. It enabled travellers and officials to report their observations or to read about individuals with experiences similar to their own. In this way the Institute and the Royal Geographical Society became important channels for the dissemination of information about outposts of the Empire. 8 These reports of colonial encounters, usually casual descriptions mixing facts and prejudice, seldom attempted to relate observations to a larger theoretical framework of human physical or cultural evolution.

The anthropologists prided themselves on being able to attract large audiences, including in particular clergymen and some adventuresome women, to their lectures at the British Association, and according to John Beddoe (1826-1911), a president of the Institute, the audience responded warmly to a defence of British imperialism (Memories, p. 315). Although these enthusiasts for accounts of exotic cultures were not trained professionals, they nonetheless thought their study had a profound moral and political purpose. In his report on the British Association meetings in 1872, A. Lane Fox (1827-1900), an officer in the Grenadier Guards, a landed gentleman, and a collector of ethnographic artifacts, claimed that there was an urgent need for anthropological studies because "the manners and customs of uncivi- lized races are changing with a rapidity unprecedented in the world's history, and ... the continued existence of some of these races is becoming a question of only a few years." Furthermore, "a nation which from its vast colonial possessions is placed more continuously in contact with savage races than any other" had, in Lane Fox's view, a special responsibility to promote anthropology.9

The second group of amateurs in the Institute were those who brought some technical expertise in human biology to their subject. These medical doctors and biologists, whose interest in anthropology was an offshoot of their primary professional responsibilities, expressed dissatisfaction with the casual observations of travellers, distrusted conclusions drawn from cultural or linguistic evidence, and looked to comparative anatomy for a more scientific assessment of the differences between racial groups. 10 These practitioners of

comparative anatomy had the advantage of being able to examine skeletal remains at home in England without venturing overseas to see the living

8 Dorothy O. Helly, ' "Informed' Opinion on Tropical Africa in Great Britain, 1860-1900," African Affairs 68 (1969), 195-200.

9 A. Lane Fox, "Report on Anthropology at the British Association," JAI 2 (1872-73), 360; later reports inJAI 5 (1875-76), 348, 485-486; 6 (1876-77), 167, 178; 11 (1881-82), 507-508.

10 George Busk, remarks on G. W. Leitner, "Siah Posh Kafirs," JAI 3 (1873-74), 368-369; W. L. Dis- tant, "On the Term 'Religion' used in Anthropology," JAI 6 (1876-77), 60-63; H. H. Risely, "The Study of Ethnology in India," JAI 20 (1890-91), 235-249.

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specimens, but nevertheless their science had its drawbacks. Beyond the diffi- culties that there was no clearcut way to distinguish acquired from inherited characteristics and no adequate theory of biological inheritance, the physical anthropologists had established no consensus about the forms of measurement or the significance of their results.

This division between the ethnographers and the physical anthropologists should not be exaggerated, for there was little evidence of conflict between the two approaches to the study of human evolution. When presidents of the Institute attempted to define the scope of anthropology in their annual addresses, their statements encompassed both approaches, but little effort was made to integrate the two sides of the new science of man. 11 The physical anthropologists claimed that their findings about inherited characteristics revealed differential intellectual and moral attributes between racial groups, but they gave little consideration to what the ethnographers had to say about the customs, values, and practices of the living representatives descended from the skulls measured in the laboratory. Similarly, while the ethnographers seemed to accept the physical anthropologists' claim that races were unequal in inheritance, their diligent pursuit of unilinear evolution of weapons, boats, games, and intoxicants, and their readiness to use living cultures as evidence of Stone Age life in Europe, presumed the psychic unity of mankind. 12

Although they were sometimes provided with a questionnaire requesting anthropometric data, authors of ethnographic papers only occasionally included a detailed study of physical characteristics. The usual pattern for Insti- tute proceedings was for an ethnographic paper by a visitor from overseas to be followed by a shorter detailed technical description of specimen crania of the racial group in question (the Royal College of Surgeons had at hand over 3,000 such specimens from around the world). 13 Occasionally Institute presidents, for example, John Evans (1823-1908) and E. B. Tylor (1832-1917), expressed

l See, for example, A. Lane Fox, JAI 5 (1875-76), 470; E. B. Tylor, JAI 9 (1879-80), 443-458; W. H. Flower, JAI 13 (1883-84), 488-500.

12 A. Lane Fox, "On the Principles of Classification adopted in the Arrangement of his Anthropologi- cal Collection," JAI 4 (1874-75), 293-308, and "On Early Modes of Navigaton," JAI 4 (1874-75), 399-437; A. Pitt-Rivers (Lane Fox), "On the Egyptian Boomerang and its Affinities," JAI 12 (1882-83), 454-463; E. B. Tylor, "On the Game of Patolli in Ancient Mexico and its Probably Asi- atic Origin," JAI 8 (1878-79), 116-131; A. W. Buckland, "Ethnological Hints afforded by the Stimulants in use among Savages and among the Ancients," JAI 8 (1878-79), 239-254. See also the extensive literature on kinship systems, for example, A. W. Howitt, "The Dieri and other Kin- dred Tribes of Central Australia," JAI 20 (1890-91), 42, 98-104.

13 Sometimes living specimens of exotic peoples were examined at the meeting, as for example some Lapps on exhibit in London. See H. H. Prince Roland Bonaparte, "Note on the Lapps of Finmark (in Norway)"; A. H. Keane, "The Lapps: Their Origin, Ethnical Affinities, Physical and Mental Characteristics, Usages, Present Status, and Future Prospects"; and J. G. Garson, "On the Physical Characteristics of the Lapps," JAI 15 (1885-86), 210-213; 213-235; and 235-238. On the Royal College of Surgeons collection, see W. H. Flower, "On the Aims and Prospects of Anthropology," JAI 13 (1883-84), 497-498.

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concern that papers on physical anthropology were under-represented, and in a more petulant tone Beddoe, an enthusiastic craniologist, complained in 1890: "there is no fear . . . that ethnography will ever lack cultivators" (Beddoe in JAI 19 [1889-90], 490; Evans inJAI 7 [1877-78], 529-530 and JAI 8 [1878-79], 419; Tylor in JAI 9 [1879-80], 453).

There was a measure of truth in this complaint. An examination of the Journal of the Anthropological Institute for 1871-1900 reveals that craniology and anthropometry always represented a minority of papers given. In the 1870s presentations on prehistoric archaeology and on early historic migra- tions in Europe outnumbered those on ethnography and craniology combined, whereas during the 1880s ethnography had become the dominant field in the Journal. Presidents' reports in the early 1870s classified papers by topic, and I have used this scheme for contributions to the Journal from 1871-1900. At no time during this period did the total number of papers on comparative anatomy, craniology, anthropometry, and the occasional broad racist treatise outnumber ethnographic papers, and only in 1887 did presentations on physical anthropology surpass the number of historical or archaeological papers. This dominance of cultural studies occurred even when, from 1884-91, the presidents were anatomists or anthropometricians. From a comparative perspective it would appear that the genteel professionals in the Anthropological Institute put less emphasis on comparative anatomy, craniology, and anthropometry than did their colleagues in France, Germany, and the United States, and at the same time these late Victorians laid the foundation for a distinguished tradition in cultural and social anthropology. 14

II

Bearing in mind that ethnographic topics dominated the Institute's proceedings and that the observations of these travelers and officials con- veyed racist attitudes and assumptions in a rather unsystematic fashion, it may still be useful to look at the anthropologists' efforts to construct a theoretical explanation for man's racial varieties. This reconstruction will bring into question the notion that scientific racism was a continuous, cumulative development from the polygenist typology of the 1860s, and will suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the post-1885 period when biological- determinist explanations were both reinvigorated and more widely popularized.

The rancorous controversy between the Ethnological and Anthropo- logical Societies in the 1860s was a scandal both to the respectable public and

14 J. Beddoe, "President's Address," JAI 20 (1890-91), 349-355 and Memories, pp. 321-322; Stocking, "The Persistence of Polygenist Thought," pp. 42-68; John S. Haller, Outcast from Evolution: Scien- tific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859-1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971).

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to the scientific community. Hunt's godless polygenesis outraged the advocates of the antislavery and missionary movements and equally infuriated the respectable audiences at the British Association, who hissed and booed his views on blacks. Hunt and his leadership of the Anthropological Society also alarmed the leaders of the scientific community, who saw him as a quack and a charlatan. Members of the influential X-Club persuaded T. H. Huxley to step in, and he chaired the discussions which led to the amalgamation of the two feuding societies (Lorimer, pp. 138-161; Stocking, Victorian Anthropol- ogy, pp. 245-257).

The fortuitous death of Hunt in 1869 and the creation of the new An- thropological Institute did not suddenly bring to an end the freewheeling racist theorizing of the 1860s. Nonetheless, during the 1870s and '80s the scandalous disputes of the earlier decade and the contentious works of Knox and Hunt were rarely mentioned in the proceedings of the new Institute. 15 In the early numbers of the Journal an occasional paper appeared which mixed racist theory and contemporary political commentary after the fashion of Hunt's An- thropological Review, but the Institute members had not much time for these presentations, and devoted most of their attention to the question of prehistoric man. 16 In fact their enthusiasm for archaeology led some fellows with more interest in race and psychology to follow Richard Burton into the new London Anthropological Society in 1873. This division was shortlived, and within two years the secessionists rejoined the Institute to participate in its saner, if duller, discussions (Lorimer, pp. 158-159).

The agenda for the anthropologists' discussion of race in the 1870s was set by a paper read by T. H. Huxley before the Ethnological Society in 1870. Huxley provided a classification scheme of racial types based on skin colour, hair colour and texture, eye colour, skull shape, and body stature. Us- ing this range of criteria, and not a single measure such as skull shape, Huxley identified five main races: Australoid; Negroid; Xanthochroi (fair whites of Europe); Melanochroi (dark whites of Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor, and Hindustan, including the Irish, Celts, Bretons, Spaniards, Arabs, and Brahmins); and Mongoloid (including the peoples of Asia, Polynesia, and the Americas). Although Huxley did not rank his categories by intelligence or ability, and although he did not attempt an evolutionary account of descent from lower to higher forms, his descriptions, like those of most systems

15 For the thirty years of the Journal (1871-1900), I came across only one reference to Knox and one to Hunt, both in the 1880s: J. Park Harrison, "On the Relative Length of the first Three Toes of the Human Foot," JAI 13 (1883-84), 265 (to Hunt), and G. Bertin, "The Races of the Babylonian Empire," JAI 18 (1888-89), 115 (to Knox).

16 For example, see the responses to J. W. Jackson, "On the Racial Aspects of the Franco-Prussian War," JAI 1 (1871-72), 30-43; the discussants preferred conventional military and political reasons to Jackson's racial ones to explain France's defeat.

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of classification, contained pejorative remarks. For example, he observed that the Negro forehead revealed a "good deal of the feminine, or child-like character," and similarly he suggested that individual dark whites, or Melan- ochroi, may "be equal to the best of the Xanthochroi" in intelligence or beauty. 17

In many ways Huxley's paper revived the procedure of James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848), the leading advocate of monogenesis in the early nineteenth century, and the man Tylor identified as the founder of ethnology in Great Britain. 18 By basing his classification scheme on a variety of characteristics and by plotting their geographical distribution, Huxley, like Prichard, emphasized the wide variation in physical features within his five classes and pointed to the many intermediate gradations in human phenotype. For Huxley the five major classes of race were not "pure" types and, unlike the mid-century polygenist typologies, his scheme pointed to the intermingling and intermixture of racial groups. His conclusion suggested that the next question to be resolved was how the similarity of physical type in the Americas and the wide diversity of form in the Pacific Islands could be explained. 19

Huxley may have identified the racial question which would most puzzle late-Victorian anthropologists, but the Institute did not immediately take up the issue. Attention began to focus on this problem only in the mid- 1870s, when rivalry in the area between France, Germany, the United States, and Great Britain began to intensify. The threat of foreign influence and controversy over migrant labour practices prompted colonial legislators in New Zealand and Australia as well as English planters and missionaries to press for direct intervention on the part of a reluctant British government. Meanwhile the anthropologists' interest was excited by reports of first encounters between Europeans and remote island societies in the Pacific. For the decade from the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s, numerous papers on the various groups and subgroups in the area of the Indian and Pacific Oceans -

on a north-south axis from the Andaman Islands to New Zealand, and on an east-west axis from the Hawaiian Islands to Madagascar - appeared in the

17 T. H. Huxley, "On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Man," Journal of the Ethnological Society, n.s., 2 (1869-70), 405, 408.

18 George W. Stocking, Jr., "From Chronology to Ethnology: James Cowles Prichard and British An- thropology, 1800-1850," introduction to James Cowles Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Man (1813; rpt. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1973); E. B. Tylor, "President's Address," JAI 9 (1879-80), 443-447.

19 Huxley, p. 409. Huxley's old antagonist Richard Owen (1804-92) sharply criticized Huxley's paper, especially his claim that there was a resemblance between ancient Egyptians and Australian Abo- rigines; see R. Owen, "Contributions to the Ethnology of Egypt," JAI 4 (1874-75), 231; see also JAI 8 (1878-79), 323. Huxley's friends came to his defence - A. Lane Fox ("Early Modes of Navi- gation," pp. 414-416) and George Busk ("President's Address," JAI 4 [1874-75], 478-491).

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Journal, making this topic the most extensive debate on race between 1870 and 1900. 20

The issue at stake was the distribution, origin, and affinities of those groups identified as black (Australian Aborigines, Papuans, Melanesians, and Negritos) and those identified as brown (chiefly Polynesians, but also Indo- nesians and Malayans). 21 The discussion divided over issues reminiscent of the old monogenist-polygenist controversy, though contributors never drew the connection with this supposedly dead issue. One side argued that the brown and black peoples shared a common, probably black ancestor, and subsequent change in physical characteristics had occurred most commonly by migration and intermixture with other groups, and rarely by geographical isolation and adaptation. The other side argued for a classification of Papuans and Polynesians (or more broadly blacks and browns) as two distinct groups sharing no physical or linguistic affinities except in cases where obvious intermixture had occurred. Among those who argued for a common origin and closer linguistic connections were Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), C. Staniland Wake, and two missionary linguists with long residence in the area, R. H. Codrington and George Brown. The theory of two distinct groups was advanced by several authors, most notably by Augustus Keane (1833-1912). 22

Keane, a professor of Hindustani at University College, London, was a frequent contributor to the Journal, served on the Institute Council in the 1880s, was a vice-president of the Institute from 1886 to 1890, and became in the 1890s an active publicist of geographical and anthropological texts which advanced an extreme racist position. 23 His theory of the distinct origins of the peoples of the Pacific claimed that the Polynesians were descended from an earlier "Caucasian" race in Malaysia ("Inter-Oceanic Races," pp. 258- 259, 275, 285-289). At Institute meetings Keane conducted a rather rancor-

20 J. Holland Rose, A. P. Newton, and E. A. Benians, eds., Cambridge History of the British Empire, 8 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), VII, pt. 1, Australia, 345-362; R. Hyam, Britain's Imperial Century, 1815-1914: A Study of Empire and Expansion (London: Batsford, 1976), pp. 337-341; A. Lane Fox, "President's Address," JAI 6 (1876-77), 496; H. N. Moseley, "On the Inhabitants of the Admiralty Islands," JAI 6 (1876-77), 379-429 (Moseley was the naturalist on board HMS Challenger).

21 Part of the discussion involved defining various groups, and although the brown-black dichotomy used here was rejected as too simple, the discussion continued to contrast Papuans and Polynesians as two broad categories; see S. J. Whitmee, "The Ethnology of Polynesia," and "A Revised Nomen- clature for the Inter-Oceanic Races of Man," JAI 8 (1878-79), 261-275, 360-369.

22 For the common origin view, see C. S. Wake, "Notes on the Polynesian Race," JAI 10 (1880-81), 109-123 and "The Papuans and Polynesians," JAI 12 (1882-83), 197-222; R. H. Codrington, "On the Languages of Melanesia," JAI 14 (1884-85), 341-43, and a review of the debate, George Brown, "Papuans and Polynesians," JAI 16 (1886-87), 311-327. For the dual-origin view, see A. H. Keane, "On the Relations of the Indo-Chinese and Inter-Oceanic Races and Languages," JAI 9 (1879-80), 254-289; W. L. Ranken, "South Sea Islanders," JAI 6 (1876-77), 223-244; and Francis A. Allen, "The Original Range of the Papuan and Negrito Races," JAI 8 (1878-79), 38-50.

23 Edward Brabrook, "A. H. Keane," Man 12 (1912), 53; Who Was Who, 1897-1915 (London: Adam and Charles Black), p. 389.

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ous dispute with Wake, another Council member and exponent of the theory of common origins (see Keane's responses to Wake's papers in JAI 10 [1880- 81], 32-33; 12 [1882-83], 220-222). Keane's position stemmed in part from his extremely antagonistic attitude toward blacks, which led him to claim that any attempt to posit a common origin of race or language meant that "the Melanesian, that is, the lower and unaggressive race, had imposed its speech on the Malayo-Polynesian, that is, the higher and more enterprizing races." 24 Such a result, in Keane's view, flew in the face of both biology and history.

Even though the discussion involved the complete repertoire of late- Victorian anthropological method, including anthropometry, philology, and cultural comparisons, and even though contributors often based their observations upon long residence in the area, the deliberations proved inconclu- sive. The physical anthropologists laid claim to the most scientific methods, yet they felt hampered in their contributions. Travellers' accounts, even those based upon the Institute's Notes and Queries on Anthropology (1874; rev. ed. 1892) or other such guides for collecting data rarely provided a sufficient range of reliable measurements, and anatomical specimens in England were too few in number to make a base for generalization. More importantly, the anatomists recognized the diversity of peoples in the area, and since the available data failed to fit into a clear pattern of racial types, they drew the conclusion that the region was one of great racial intermixture. 25

Philology proved no more conclusive than comparative anatomy. The philologists did not accept language as an indication of race as readily as they had between 1840 and 1870. For example, several discussants on language kept before themselves the dictum of A. H. Sayce (1845-1933), Professor of Comparative Philology at Queen's College, Oxford, that language was a test not of race but of "social contact." 26 Nonetheless, the philologists, despite

24 Keane's remarks in discussion of Codrington, JAI 14 (1884-85), 42; see also his remarks on G. W. Parker, "On the People and Languages of Madagascar," JAI 12 (1882-83), 492-493.

25 See for example H. 0. Forbes, "On the Ethnology of Timor-Laut," and J. G. Garson, "On the Cra- nial Characters of the Natives of Timor-Laut," JAI 13 (1883-84), 8-31, 386-402. For examples of physical data in travelers' accounts, see H. N. Moseley, "On the Inhabitants of the Admiralty Is- lands," JAI 6 (1876-77), 382-387; E. H. Man, "On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands," JAI 12 (1882-83), pt. 1, 69-75, and "The Nicobar Islanders,"JAI 18 (1888-89), 354-394; W. H. Flower, "On the Osteology and Affinities of the Natives of the Andaman Islands," JAI 9 (1879-80), 108-135, and "On the Cranial Characteristics of the Natives of the Fiji Islands," JAI 10 (1880-81), 153-154, 171. Notes and Queries on Anthropology, originally edited by Lane Fox for the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1874, was re-edited for the Anthropological Institute by J. G. Garson and C. H. Read in 1892.

26 A. H. Sayce, "Language and Race," JAI 5 (1875-76), 212-213. The distinction was not accepted by all of his audience (see pp. 217-220), but it was repeated by Lane Fox (remarks on Peter Comrie, "Anthropological Notes of New Guinea," JAI 6 [1876-77], 115) and by Tylor ("Address to the De- partment of Anthropology of the British Association," JAI 9 [1879-80], 240). Sayce himself did not adhere to the distinction and had a hand in reviving Aryan racism; see "Address to the Anthropo- logical Section of the British Association at Manchester," JAI 17 (1887-88), 166-177.

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the skepticism of prominent cultural evolutionists such as Tylor, still looked for signs of the root language in order to trace which racial groups were original, and which were migrant or had borrowed the language of other cultures (see Tylor's remarks inJAI 9 [1879-80], 236-239). This use of language as evidence of change, migration, or intermixture also invited speculation about which groups involved in these processes were aggressive or passive, dominant or subordinate. Occasionally there was a suggestion (usually put forward by those arguing for two distinct peoples) that in the midst of evidence of physical diversity and intermixture, language demonstrated a stronger fixity of type (Keane, "Inter-Oceanic Races," p. 227; remarks on Codrington, pp. 40-43; remarks on Parker, pp. 492-493).

The debate between the linguists involved contradictory claims by one expert against another, yet philology together with comparative anatomy remained more trusted methods than the newer approaches to the study of culture. Lane Fox and Tylor, both skilled in the art of tracing cultural evolution by the comparative method, recommended that more attention be paid to cultural affinities in the region. 27 Ethnographic studies of individual societies gave details about tools, artifacts, customs, and beliefs, but there was some resistance to using this evidence to trace possible links between Polyne- sian and Melanesian people because of the inability of observers to distinguish cultural borrowings from independent inventions. 28

III

The Anthropological Institute's lengthy discussions of the diversity of racial groups in the region of the Indian and south Pacific Oceans came to no clear resolution, but simply ceased to be of much interest as other areas, especially Africa, came into prominence after the mid-1880s. Nonetheless, the discussion of the Oceanic races had raised significant problems for Victorian scientists interested in the racial question. Although the participants were concerned with problems of classification by anatomical comparison, the discussion was not simply a continuation of mid-nineteenth-century racial typologies. Races were not seen as distinct species, but rather as outcomes of

27 A. Lane Fox, "Observations on Mr. Man's Collection of Andamanese and Nicobarese Objects," JAI 7 (1877-78), 444-445, 450-451; E. B. Tylor, "Notes on Asiatic Relations of Polynesian Cul- ture,"JAI 11 (1882-83), 401-405; Henry Yule, "Notes on Analogies of Manners between the Indo- Chinese Races and the Races of the Indian Archipelago," JAI 9 (1879-80), 290-304.

28 See, for example, Ranken, p. 230. Keane rejected Wake's use of such evidence in his remarks on Wake's "Notes on the Origin of Malagasy," JAI 11 (1881-82), 32. See also W. H. Flower, "Aims and Prospects of Anthropology," pp. 491-492.

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evolution, and most importantly, as products of intermixture between groups. Even though the evolutionary synthesis was accepted as a given, the discussion was not in any precise sense Darwinian. 29

Few references were made to Darwin's work, and although authors, out of intrinsic interest in the subject, paid attention to the sexual preferences of various cultures, no one attempted a Darwinian study of sexual selection as the explanation of racial varieties. Nor did the concept of natural selection enter prominently into the discussion. Since the physical environment in the region was accepted as common to all groups, there was little sense in attempting to explain particular traits - for example, long-headedness as against broad- headedness - as adaptations enhancing a particular group's survival capacity. Although there were some suggestions that geographically isolated groups, for example the Andaman Islanders or Tasmanians, might be "living fossils" representing an earlier form of man, there was no systematic attempt to trace an evolutionary progression of physical types in the region, with more "advanced" forms evolving out of more "primitive" ones.

The predominant mode of explanation was historical-diffusionist. The cultural, linguistic, and physical mix of peoples of the Pacific was assumed to be the product of a long history of waves of immigration which led to intermixture between new migrants and previously settled peoples. This quest for a historical form of explanation with its mix of anatomical, linguistic, and cultural evidence retained a form of typological thinking about race, but it had more in common with the monogenist tradition of Prichard and the Ethnological Society than with the mid-century polygenesis of Knox and Hunt.

Late-Victorian anthropologists as a rule described lighter-complexioned Polynesians in more favourable terms than darker Papuans and Melanesians. This bias was not simply a product of the contrast in skin colour or culture between Melanesians and Victorian middle-class professionals, but was the result of an established association growing out of Europe's long-term historical links with Africa and the enslavement of its peoples. By the 1880s the Journal of the Anthropological Institute strengthened these negative associations between blacks, savagery, and inferiority by publishing sensationalized accounts

29 The question of what is "Darwinian" is problematic. Some authors prefer to use the term extremely broadly; see Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), pp. 314-332, and Greta Jones, Social Darwinism and English Thought: The Interaction between Biological and Social Theory (Brighton: Harvester, 1980). Others prefer, as I do especially in this context, lim- iting the term's use to specific ideas advanced by Darwin, chiefly that of natural selection; see R. J. Halliday, "Social Darwinism: A Definition," Victorian Studies 14: 4 (June 1971), 389-405. On Dar- win's theory of sexual selection as applied to the origin of human races see Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1871), I, 248-251; Stepan, pp. 59-65; Lorimer, pp. 142-145.

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of African peoples and cultures by travelers, missionaries, and officials promoting European penetration of the "Dark Continent." 30

Between 1879 and 1885, in the midst of the discussion of the Oceanic races and of the new interest in Africa, two leading members of the Institute attempted to sum up the current position of science on race. The first was Tylor, the foremost student of cultural evolution, and the second was W. H. Flower (1831-99), President of the Zoological Society, Director of the Natu- ral History Museum, and a respected authority on comparative anatomy.

Tylor's statements on race tended to attach less significance to physical differences than to learned behaviour or culture. His statements were often in- consistent, however. For example, in Primitive Culture (1871) he argued that it was "both possible and desirable to eliminate considerations of hereditary varieties of races of men, and to treat mankind as homogeneous in nature, though placed in different grades of civilization." 31 Similarly, in a paper before the Institute in 1890, arguing for a statistical approach to the study of culture, he claimed that "the institutions of man are as distinctly stratified as the earth on which he lives. They succeed each other in series substantially uni- form over the globe, independent of what seem the comparatively superficial differences of race and language, but shaped by similar human nature acting through successively changed conditions in savage, barbaric, and civilized life."32

On the other hand, Tylor's textbook Anthropology (1881) gave greater scope to racial determinism by classing differences in intelligence and tem- perament as racial traits, and by suggesting that subsequent generations of racial crosses reverted to primary types. 33 In his textbook Tylor's treatment of physical anthropology depended heavily on the work of Huxley and Flower. Ironically Flower, in an otherwise favourable appraisal of Tylor's book in a speech before the British Association, criticized the cultural evolutionist for not giving due weight to the study of race (JAI 11 [1881-82], 185).

In his President's Address before the Anthropological Institute in 1879, Tylor gave a historical account of developments since Prichard's stud-

30 See in particular H. H. Johnston, "On the Races of the Congo and the Portuguese Colonies in Western Africa," JAI 13 (1883-84), 461-479, and "The People of Eastern Equatorial Africa," JAI 15 (1885-86), 3-15; see also C. E. Conder, "The Present Conditions of the Native Tribes in Bechuanaland," JAI 16 (1886-87), 76-96; R. C. Philips, "The Lower Congo: A Sociological Study," JAI 17 (1887-88), 214-229; James Macdonald, "Manners, Customs, Superstitions and Re- ligions of South African Tribes," JAI 19 (1889-90), 264-296, and 20 (1890-91), 113-140. See also Patrick Brantlinger, "Victorians and Africans: The Geneology of the Myth of the Dark Continent," Critical Inquiry 12 (1985), 166-203.

31 E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1871), I, 6-7. 32 E. B. Tylor, "On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions applied to Laws of

Marriage and Descent," JAI 18 (1888-89), 269. 33 E. B. Tylor, Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization (London: Macmillan,

1881), pp. 56, 74-75, 80-81.

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ies in ethnology, and noted that "there lies between Prichard's time and ours the period of popularity and decline of the Polygenist doctrine." In spite of its demise, he observed that polygenesis had helped gain acceptance for the great extension of the length of human history required by evolution, and he saw it as the task of anthropologists to record the development of human varieties by "the effects of the intermarriage of races, and their change under al- tered condition of life" (JAI 9 [1879-80], 444; see also Anthropology, pp. 5-7). In an address before the British Association, also delivered in 1879, Tylor again stressed the vast extension of biological time, putting great emphasis on the fact that man's main racial groups had come into being in the prehistoric period, and on the difficulty of tracing changes in racial type because of the crossing of racial groups. Consequently, he concluded, "the close resemblance of all men in body and mind, and the freedom with which races inter- cross" made it probable that mankind descended from "one original stock" (JAI 9 [1879-801, 235-236). Although he had warned elsewhere that it was futile to attempt to locate the place of man's origins, he speculated that human beings originated in the tropics, and probably in the region "from Africa across to the Eastern Archipelago" (p. 239; see Anthropology, pp. 112-113). Tylor then turned to the question of the origins of civilization, observing that it began among nonwhite people, and remarking that the ancient Egyptians were probably "a mixed race, mainly of African origin" (pp. 240, 241). Tylor's survey of anthropological science's position on the racial question in 1879 was clearly far removed from that of earlier racial typologist works such as Hunt's The Negro's Place in Nature (1863), but Tylor, as a cultural evolutionist, may have given less weight to racial determinism than those of his colleagues who were more attuned to the biological sciences.

In his capacity as President of the Zoological Society and of the An- thropological Institute from 1883 to 1885, Flower gave an anatomist's assessment of the place of race in anthropological studies. In an address before the British Association in 1881, he delivered a cautious treatment of the subject which was similar to Tylor's position. From the evidence of intermixture, Flower observed that scientists no longer debated that old question of the common or independent origin of racial groups; but within an evolutionary framework and allowing for the great antiquity of man, they thought that from a probable common ancestor "racial differences began slowly to be developed through the potency of various kinds of selection acting upon the slight variations which appeared in individuals in obedience to the tendency implanted in all living things" (JAI 11 [1881-82], 188). He stressed the role of geographical isolation in the development of particular racial traits, including "intellectual and moral qualities" (p. 189). The anatomist also suggested that in the long course of human evolution some racial groups may

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have died out or been absorbed by more successful rivals, and that some new races were formed from the intermixture of earlier groups. While admitting that the fossil record needed to reconstruct this evolutionary process had yet to be uncovered, Flower depicted the biological history of man as "a constant de- struction and reconstruction; a constant tendency to separation and differentia- tion, and a tendency to combine again into a common uniformity" (p. 189).

Given this fluid picture of human evolution, Flower then took the un- usual step of admitting that the term "race" itself had no adequate definition: "any theory implying that the different individuals composing the human species can be parcelled out into certain definite groups, each with its well- marked and permanent limits separating it from all others, has no scientific foundation" (pp. 189-190; see also JAI 9 [1879-80], 128). Flower also questioned the value of craniology, which he described as an attempt "to make use of what appear trivial characters, and compensate for their triviality by their number" (p. 190). While he questioned if any productive results would come from these laborious efforts, he held out the hope that improve- ments in measurement and greater agreement among scientists about their methods would lead to more definite conclusions (pp. 190-192).

In subsequent statements about the place of race in anthropology, Flower gave a less restrained view. In his President's Address before the Insti- tute in 1884, he insisted on the primacy of comparative anatomy above both philology and cultural comparisons ("Aims and Prospects of Anthropology," pp. 491-492). He asserted that physical distinctions "are probably always as- sociated" with differences in "temper and intellect," and claimed that as a consequence anthropology had important lessons for politicians seeking to govern the diverse peoples not only within the Empire but even within the British Isles (pp. 492-493). He argued that policies suitable "to mitigate the difficul- ties and disadvantages under which the English artisan classes may suffer in their struggle through life, would be absolutely inapplicable, for instance, to the case of the Egyptian fellaheen. It is not only that their education, training and circumstances are dissimilar, but that their very mental constitution is totally distinct." In cases where contact occurred between races even more dissimilar, as between Englishmen and Africans, American Indians, Austra- lian Aborigines, or Pacific Islanders, the result, the anatomist claimed, "generally ends in the extermination of one of them" (p. 493).

In his President's Address the following year, Flower outlined his scheme of racial classification. Once again he admitted that any classification scheme would contain inadequacies because of the existence of many intermediate gradations and because of the frequency of intermixture (JAI 14 [1884-85], 379-380). Although he used a variety of physical traits and measurements to classify groups, his threefold primary division of blacks, yellows, and whites clearly rested upon skin colour (pp. 381-382). On the vexed ques-

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tion of the peoples of the Pacific, he placed Melanesians in the black class, and Polynesians in the yellow or Mongolian class, while admitting that both groups showed signs of intermixture. He went so far as to suggest that some Polynesians, for example the Maoris, came close to a "Caucasian" appear- ance, but he rejected Keane's theory of a primitive Caucasian origin for want of sufficient evidence (pp. 384-385, 388-389). He followed Huxley in divid- ing whites into the "blonds" and the "darks," but in contrast to Tylor, he claimed that the ancient Egyptians were "nearly pure Melanochroi" with some traces of Ethiopian ancestry (pp. 391-392). In concluding his presentation, Flower observed that in its general features his classification scheme, in spite of a vast increase in knowledge, "scarcely differs from that of Cuvier nearly sixty years ago" (pp. 392-393).

To Flower this continuity confirmed the essential truthfulness of the classification scheme. As an anatomist Flower, like his predecessors, simply followed the trusted practice of the biological sciences of seeking order in nature by classification. Even Darwinian evolution did not abandon existing schemes of classification, but simply provided a new explanation for their existence. Consequently Victorian scientists still thought in terms of racial typology in spite of Darwin's transformation of the significance of species, in spite of abundant evidence of racial intermixture, and in spite of a momen- tary hesitation in the 1870s and early '80s, when some leaders of the scientific community paused to consider what they meant by race. This was only a pause, however, for, as the contrast between Flower's remarks in 1881 and 1885 indicates, racist thinking experienced a revival in the 1880s.

IV

The revival of theoretical racism in the mid-1880s resulted in part from innovations in anthropological method. After a period of criticism of the sheer tedium, confusion, and inconsequence of craniology, a new international agreement in 1886 on the cephalic index led to greater certainty about skull measurements. 34 New developments in psychology, particularly David Ferrier's localization of functions of the brain, opened up the possibil-

34 For criticism of craniology, see George Busk, "President's Address," JAI 3 (1873-74), 509, 520- 525; J. Beddoe, "On the Anthropological Colour in Phenomena in Belgium and Elsewhere," JAI 10 (1880-81), 374-380; Paul Topinard, "Observations on the Methods and Processes of Anthro- pometry," JAI 10 (1880-81), 212-214, 223-224; J. G. Garson, "The Frankfurt Craniometric Agreement with critical remarks thereon," JAI 14 (1884-85), 64-83. For the new consensus, see J. G. Garson, "The Cephalic Index" and "The International Agreement on the Classification and Nomenclature of the Cephalic Index," JAI 16 (1886-87), 11-17 and 17-20.

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ity of comparing the brains of civilized and savage men to demonstrate unequal mental development. 35

A more important development was the shift away from the emphasis on skull shape and size alone to anthropometry, which encompassed not only measurements of the entire skeleton, but also tests of the sense and motor functions. 36 At the same time innovations in statistical analysis, pioneered and promoted by Francis Galton (1822-1911), President of the Anthropolog- ical Institute from 1885 to 1889, allowed data to be handled in a more sophis- ticated manner, including the use of range rather than mean as a standard of comparisons, the employment of percentiles and curves of normal distribution, and the concepts of standard deviation and regression analysis. Galton was extremely active in promoting new methods to improve the quantifiable and - in his view - scientific presentation of anthropological data. One of his more ingenious initiatives in the use of new technology was specifically in the study of race: he advocated superimposing individual photographs of representatives of racial groups one on top of the other so that distinctive traits would stand out in a composite picture. 37

Galton's particular interest in anthropology, as in biology and mathe- matics, stemmed from his preoccupation with demonstrating the influence of heredity over environment in determining an individual's attributes and potential. His interest in the "nature versus nurture" question, to use Galton's own phrase, first became apparent in Tropical South Africa (1853), an account of his travels in South-West Africa in 1850-52. He held a generally contemp- tuous attitude toward the peoples of Africa, and claimed innate characteristics explained both the differences between various peoples in South-West Africa and the overall inferiority of Africans to Europeans. In spite of his earlier travels and his subsequent role as Honorary Secretary to the Royal Geo- graphical Society during the exciting "Search for Sources of the Nile" in the 1860s, he showed little interest in ethnography or even in peoples outside the British Isles. His first attempts at advancing the eugenic principles of inheritance, particularly "Heredity Talent and Character" (published in Macmillan's Magazine in 1865) and his book Hereditary Genius (1869), pointed to differences between races to illustrate the importance of inherited characteristics.

35 D. Ferrier, "On the Functional Topography of the Brain," JAI 17 (1887-88), 26-31; H. D. Rolleston, "Description of the Cerebral Hemispheres of an Adult Australian Male," JAI 17 (1887- 88), 32-42; see also Alexander Bain, "The Scope of Anthropology and its Relation to the Science of Mind," JAI 15 (1885-86), 380-388.

36 "Extracts from the Report of the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association," JAI 9 (1879-80), 345-351; Francis Galton, "On Recent Designs of Anthropometric Instruments," JAI 16 (1886-87), 2-9; British Association, Anthropometric Investigation in the British Isles (London: Royal Anthropological Institute, 1909).

37 Francis Galton, "President's Address," JAI 18 (1888-89), 401-419; "Composite Portraits," JAI 8 (1878-79), 132-144. For an example of the method, including photographs, see Joseph Jacobs, "On the Racial Characteristics of Modem Jews," JAI 15 (1885-86), 53-56.

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In the 1860s he had to contest established environmental explanations for human differences, but by the 1880s his ideas found a more receptive audience. 38 By this time he had also come to play a leading role in the Anthropo- logical Institute, where his presentations dealt largely with the application of statistical methods to human populations. His main interest lay not in differences of race but in differences within the British population, usually on the basis of social class. 39

On one occasion before the Institute, when Galton dealt in a presidential address with populations in the colonies, he observed that in temper- ate zones where Europeans had settled the aboriginal inhabitants faced "rapid diminution" and thus "their peculiarities are losing present interest and are becoming historical and archaic" (JAI 16 [1886-87], 392). He then expressed a greater sense of urgency about the study of British populations, particularly those living in tropical colonies. For the heat Galton recommended air condi- tioning, using new techniques of refrigeration. For the more difficult obstacle of disease, he thought that natural selection itself would lead to the survival and reproduction of the minority of whites with immunity. Otherwise he thought some intermixture with blacks (illustrated by an analogy of mixing black and white fluids to various shades of coffee to demonstrate the mathematical laws of heredity) would produce a breed of whites capable of survival (pp. 394-402).

In addition to his innovations in method, Galton's most substantial contribution to the Anthropological Institute was his work as a publicist. At the International Health Exhibition in South Kensington in 1884, Galton reported in a presidential address, he found over 9,000 individuals who were willing to spend twenty minutes being measured in his tiny anthropometric laboratory (JAI 14 [1884-85], 205-221; 17 [1886-87], 346-355). In 1887 he gave a series of public lectures at the South Kensington Museum, but the series, although sponsored by the Institute, was on Galton's own limited conception of the discipline, for he lectured on "Heredity and Nurture" (announcement in JAI 17 [1887-881, 79). His example was followed in 1889 by a group of Institute members who offered a public lecture series on the more conventional topics of physical and cultural evolution (announcement in JAJ 19 [1889-90], 441-442).

38 Raymond E. Francher, "Francis Galton's African Ethnology and its Role in the Development of his Psychology," The British Journal of the History of Science 16 (1983), 67-79; R. S. Cowan, "Nature and Nurture: The Interplay of Biology and Politics in the Work of Francis Galton," in W. C. Coleman and C. Limoges, eds., Studies in the History of Biology, 7 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), I, 133-208. See also D. W. Forrest, Francis Galton: The Life and Work of a Victorian Genius (New York: Taplinger, 1974), especially chaps. 2, 3, and 5.

39 Francis Galton, "On Recent Designs of Anthropometric Instruments," pp. 2-9; "President's Ad- dress," JAI 15 (1885-86), 489-499; "President's Address," JAI 18 (1888-89), 406-407; "On the Head Growth in Students at the University of Cambridge," JAI 18 (1888-89), 155-156. Even the presentations of those who followed Galton's methods dealt with populations in the United King- dom; see Jacobs, "Racial Characteristics," and also his "The Comparative Distribution of Jewish Ability," JAI 15 (1885-86), 23-62 and 351-379; J. Jacobs and Isidore Spielman, "On the Compara- tive Anthropometry of English Jews," JAI 19 (1889-90), 76-88; John Venn, "Cambridge Anthro- pometry," JAI 18 (1888-89), 140-154.

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Galton's one promotional enterprise dealing directly with the question of race was the Anthropological Conference on the Native Races of the British Possessions held at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 1886. This series of lectures and exhibits, including both artifacts and some live specimen "savages," offered presentations by white colonists and officials. In contrast to Galton's emphasis on quantitative scientific studies, these papers were rarely scholarly. They provided generalized descriptions of indigenous populations and, in accordance with Galton's introductory remarks, offered impressions about the impact of Europeans upon traditional ways of living. Most speakers from areas of European settlement reported on the decline in the size of the aboriginal population and the disintegration of indigenous cultures, but depicted colonial administrators as providing benevolent protection. Some speakers used the occasion to engage in the promotion of colonial development and described the "natives" as a pool of productive labourers (the proceedings of the conference were published in JAI 16 [1886-87], 174-236).

In the midst of these efforts to promote anthropological science, there was also a revival of some of the more extreme speculations about the origin and nature of racial groups. The most notable example was the revised ver- sion of the Aryan theory in the late 1880s. Sayce and Isaac Taylor (1829- 1901), Canon of York and a noted philologist, followed recent continental works in arguing for an Aryan homeland in northwestern Europe, against the established convention of a central Asian origin linking Indian and European peoples through a common linguistic heritage. Although Taylor's paper received a largely hostile reception before the Institute, the revival of the debate also reintroduced the confused connection between race and language. 40 The 1880s also saw a new effort to identify a Jewish type both by anthropometry and by use of historical evidence. 41 Led by Beddoe, there was also a renewed interest in the racial composition of the British population and a revival of the idea of fixed types that persisted in spite of historical evidence of a mixed ancestry. 42

In addition to this interest in European populations, members of the Institute in the 1880s attempted to deduce an evolutionary account for the

40 Isaac Taylor, "The Origin and Primitive Seat of the Aryans," JAI 17 (1887-88), 238-269, and the responses to it, 269-275; A. H. Sayce, "Address to the Anthropological Section of the British Associa- tion," JAI 17 (1887-88), 166-177. For examples of the confused link between race and language, see C. R. Conder, "The Races of Modem Asia," JAI 19 (1889-90), 30-43; J. Beddoe, "President's Ad- dress," JAJ 19 (1889-90), 491-493.

41 See Jacob's articles and G. Bertin, "On the Origin and Primitive Home of the Semites," JAI 11 (1881-82), 423-437.

42 J. Beddoe, "English Surnames from an Ethnological Point of View," JAI 12 (1882-83), 231-242, and The Races of Britain: A Contribution to the Anthropology of Western Europe (Bristol: J. W. Arrow- smith, 1885); J. Park Harrison, "On the Survival of certain Racial Features in the Population of the British Isles," JAI 12 (1882-83), 243-255; A. L. Lewis, "On the Evils arising from the Use of His- torical National Names as Scientific Terms," JAI 8 (1878-79), 325-335.

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varieties of race from their distribution around the globe. The most notable example was a presentation in 1885 by James Dallas, Curator of the Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, who used a threefold primary division of races into black, yellow, and white, and a twofold north-south division for zones of evolution. Thus he claimed that blacks evolved from a centre in south India and spread east into the Pacific islands and west into Africa, whereas a separate centre of evolution north of the Himilayas led to the emergence of white and yellow types who subsequently migrated over the Eurasian land mass and the Americas. The polygenetic implications of Dallas's theory were clear, but his paper went virtually uncontested in 1885.43

Subsequently papers from more respected authorities using anatomical and anthropometic methods hinted at a similar polygenetic account of evolution. Flower pursued his studies of short varieties of black populations, including Andaman Islanders and the Pygmies of Central Africa, to develop a theory that these people were the primitive and childlike stock out of which Africans and Melanesians evolved. 44 H. H. Risley's anthropometric study of caste in India also served to strengthen the idea of a north-south racial division, arguing that the caste system originated as a division by race, not by social function. Risley claimed that physical distinctions were perpetuated by exogamy, and that dark Dravidians from the south composed the lower castes compared to the higher caste Aryans from the north ("Ethnology in India," pp. 235-263). These attempts to deduce an evolution of racial types grew out of the earlier debate on the Oceanic races. Although at first they were seen as speculative ventures, they became entrenched in standard texts on ethnology and human geography in the 1890s and even into the 1920s and '30s. 45

V

By the end of the nineteenth century, the new methods and ideas of the 1880s had become standard scientific accounts in texts aimed at the general reader. Keane led the way in producing these new general texts, translating for-

43 James Dallas, "On the Primary Divisions and Geographical Distribution of Mankind," JAI 15 (1885-86), 304-330; for other examples, see W. S. Duncan, "On the Probable Origin of Man's Ev- olution," JAI 12 (1882-83), 513-525; G. Bertin, in "The Races of the Babylonian Empire," pp. 104-120, argued for a universal low-class "ground race."

44 W. H. Flower, "On the Osteology and Affinities of the Natives of the Andaman Islands," JAI 9 (1879-80), 127-132; "Descriptions of two Skeletons of Akkas, a Pygmy Race from Central Africa," JAI 18 (1888-89), 3-19; "The Pygmy Races of Man: A Lecture at the Royal Institution," JAI 18 (1888-89), 72-91.

45 A. H. Keane, Ethnology (1895; 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896), pp. 221- 241; A. C. Haddon, The Races of Man and Their Distribution (1909; rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929), pp. 139-156.

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eign travel, scientific, and ethnological works and editing school geography books. For Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel, a frequently reissued reference work, he helped produce volumes on Africa (1878, 1884, 1895, 1904), Asia (1882, 1893, 1896, 1906), Australasia (1879, 1883, 1888, 1908), and Central and South America (1878, 1885, 1901, 1909-11). He wrote two texts on anthropology: Ethnology (1895) and Man, Past and Present (1899). He also contributed to The Living Races of Mankind: a popular illustrated account of the customs, habits, pursuits, feasts and ceremonies of the races of Mankind throughout the world (1905), a serialized magazine amply illustrated with photographs of exotic peoples. In 1908 he published another illustrated text, The World's Peoples: A Popular Account of their Bodily and Mental Charac- ters, Beliefs, Traditions, Political and Social Institutions. For his efforts in ethnology, Keane received a civil list pension in 1897 (Who Was Who, p. 389).

Keane's books were largely descriptive, providing a catalogue of characteristics for each racial or ethnic group in turn. Unhappy with the inadequacies of physical classification, Keane thought that mental characteristics could also be classified and would reveal sharper differences of race. As a result he had no hesitation about drawing up psychological profiles for each racial group (Ethnology, p. 171). In Man, Past and Present, each chapter began with a taxonomy of the race which included a brief description of "tempera- ment." Sudanese Negroes, for example, he described as "sensuous, indolent, improvident, fitful, passionate and cruel, though often affectionate and faith- ful; little sense of dignity, and slight self-consciousness, hence easy acceptance of yoke of slavery; musical."46 Southern Mongols received an equally uncomplimentary description: "Somewhat sluggish, with little initiative, but great endurance, cunning rather than intelligent; generally thrifty and indus- trious, but most indolent in Siam and Burma; moral standards low, with slight sense of right and wrong" (p. 170). At the other extreme stood the "Caucasic Peoples," who are "All brave, imaginative, musical, and richly en- dowed intellectually" (p. 442). Keane reserved his highest praise for the Saxon, who remained an identifiable type in spite of the mixing of various peoples that made up the British population: "The Saxon also still remains the Saxon, stolid and solid, outwardly abrupt but warm-hearted and true, haughty and even overbearing through an innate sense of superiority, yet at heart sympathetic and always just, hence a ruler of men; seemingly dull or slow, yet preeminent in the realms of philosophy and imagination (Newton, Shakespeare)" (p. 532). Keane justified these confident descriptions of mental as well as physical attributes by the claim that he depicted only "ideal types" from which real individuals might vary (Ethnology, pp. 223-229). This philosophical nicety made little imprint on the general reader, for Keane's

46 A. H. Keane, Man, Past and Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899), p. 36.

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ideal type frequently appeared on the page as a photograph of a real living person.

Keane's confident assertions about racial types rested not upon the existing state of comparative anatomy, but upon his training as a linguist. In his more analytical work, Ethnology, Keane reviewed the findings of the physical anthropologists and noted that the evidence of the fertility of racial crosses and the fact that almost all existing races were of mixed ancestry confirmed the specific unity of man (pp. 142-143, 150-156). Even though his descriptions of racial types, for example of the Saxon, were reminiscent of Knox's, Keane identified the Scottish anatomist as part of the discredited American polygenist school, and looked with favour on Prichard's founding work in ethnology (pp. 165-166).

Nonetheless, Keane inclined toward polygenesis. Because of the work of the anatomists he was forced to admit all mankind belonged to one species, but he still claimed that existing races "are to a certain extent of diverse origin, that is to say, descend in diverging, converging or parallel lines from their several pleistocene precursors" (p. 162; see also pp. 223-229, 239-240). Keane claimed that his scheme reconciled the conflict between monogenesis and polygenesis, but in a letter to Wallace his insistence upon the autonomy of the white race and its independent origin was expressed more frankly: "My theory of the evolution of black, white and yellow, not one from the other, but independently from their several pleistocene precursors (the generalized human type) seems to meet such cases as these. The white man is thus, not a late arrival on the scene, but of equal antiquity with the others, and so starts simultaneously with them on his life history."47 For Keane the greater sophis- tication and precision of the anatomists limited the possibility of broad generalizations about racial groups, whereas his own field of linguistics together with observations drawn from a wide range of travel literature permitted a freer speculation about the mental characteristics and the independent historical development of the human races (Ethnology, pp. 42-44, 171, 191-205).

Although Keane was the most active publicist in the 1890s, he was not alone. A. C. Haddon (1855-1940), a pioneer of fieldwork on the Torres Straits Expedition of 1898 and a founder of the study of anthropology at Cambridge, published The Study of Man in 1898. In this general text he made extensive use of 1880s issues of the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, and included descriptions of racial groups similar to those of Keane. 48 With A. H. Quiggin, Haddon reissued Keane's Man, Past and Present in 1920, and Haddon's own The Races of Man and their Distribution (1912) appeared in re-

47 A. H. Keane to A. R. Wallace, 22 November 1899, Wallace Papers, British Library Add. MS 46437, ff. 67-68.

48 A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (London: Bliss, Sands, 1898); see also A. H. Quiggin, Haddon the Head Hunter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1942).

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vised form in 1929. These later editions did not substantially alter the racist observations and conclusions of earlier versions, so that the post-1885 generalizations about race, entrenched in general texts on anthropology in the 1890s, were passed on to a new generation of students after 1918.

Victorian racism reveals two persistent continuities from at least the 1850s: the belief in the natural inequality of human beings, and a readiness to generalize freely about the character of racial and ethnic groups. Neither of these patterns of thought were derived from systematic science, but were habits of mind shaped by the larger social and cultural environment. Much of the Victorian discussion of race took place in a haphazard fashion, mixing the observations of travelers with common prejudices. This was the commonplace discourse not only of everyday conversation and of the daily press, but also of scientific gatherings and publications including the organs of the British As- sociation, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Anthropological Insti- tute. Prior to 1900 at least, scientific developments failed to counteract the distorting influences of commonplace prejudices, and in fact served to give these observations both greater coherence and greater authority. The reasons for this failure will be found in a historiography of nineteenth-century science which goes beyond a recounting of ideas to place science and scientists within their social and ideological contexts. 49

In the second half of the nineteenth century, two external conditions sustained the inegalitarian assumptions and race generalizations of scientists. First, the external reality of expanding European domination over the globe and its peoples encouraged Victorians to rank racial groups by their power and status. Second, the presumptions and values of the professional middle class gave focus to the scientists' inquiries. Both elements were evident in the Anthropological Institute. Its members were drawn largely from the professional middle class, many with colonial connections or experience, and the Institute's proceedings gave a forum for the presentation of colonizers' views of race and race relations.

A more exact sense of the chronology of developments provides a more precise measure of the place of scientific racism in nineteenth-century images of race. Although the 1850s and '60s may well be the point of origin for modem scientific racism, the innovations of the 1880s and '90s were more important for the character of scientific racism in the 1920s and '30s. Knox, Hunt, and the Anthropological Society of London may have liberated the science of man from religion and humanitarianism, a somewhat exaggerated benefit, but they met with public ridicule and rejection by leaders of the sci-

49 Robert Young, "The Historiographic and Ideological Contexts of the Nineteenth-Century Debate on Man's Place in Nature," in M. Teich and R. Young, eds., Changing Perspectives in the History of Science (London: Heinemann, 1973), pp. 344-473.

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entific community, and their works went virtually unnoticed in the scientific discussion of race in the last three decades of the nineteenth century.

Why, then, did Galton and his colleagues have so much greater suc- cess after 1880? By this time an institutional framework existed for the more effective dissemination of scientific ideas. In part the professionalization of science, in this case the medical and biological sciences, rather than anthropology itself, gave writers and lecturers greater authority than the old-fashioned morality and casual impressions of clergy, philanthropists, and travelers. The development of a technical vocabulary and the application of statistical methods added to the professional mystique and authority of the scientists. Specialized publications, such as the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, or a magazine such as Nature for the broader community of professionals, kept scientists informed about innovations in anthropometry and new ideas about the origin and diversity of human racial groupings.

With greater professionalism also came increased specialization and protection from potential sources of criticism. By the 1890s founders of Brit- ish sociology such as Patrick Geddes and L. T. Hobhouse began to query the weight given to biological determinism. But just as the comparative anatomists and the ethnographers in the Anthropological Institute never attempted to reconcile their approaches and findings, so too the sociologists and biological determinists pursued their specialties, neither group affecting the other. Finally, from the 1890s the extension of education, especially at the secondary and post-secondary levels, created a readership among the growing ranks of teachers and students, and thus a market for general texts and popular magazines whose authors - by their own inclination but also by the demands of the form - were drawn into making broad generalizations about racial groups. In the case of anthropology, public displays at museums and exhibitions also played an important educational role.

These institutional elements may explain why the scientific racists spoke with a more powerful voice from the 1880s, but they do not explain why they spoke with a more acceptable voice. The principal ideas of the scientific racists had been current since the late eighteenth century, but prior to the 1880s the exponents of these ideas had been on the fringes of scientific orthodoxy, in some cases identified as notorious eccentrics. This description certainly fits Edward Long, Henry Home [Lord Kames], and Charles White in the late eighteenth century, and equally applies to Knox, Hunt, and Burton in the mid-Victorian period, but it hardly suits Galton or Flower. In one sense racism as an ideology was a pseudo-science in the 1850s and '60s, but an established science from the 1880s onwards.

By shifting attention away from the origins of scientific racism in the 1850s and '60s to its institutionalization in the 1880s, we can begin to make

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more intelligent sense of the context in which these ideas prospered. By the 1880s promoters of scientific racism no longer met outraged shouts at the British Association, nor did anthropologists rail against radical philosophers or naive believers in human rights. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, members of the professional middle class were confident in the realism of their vision and yet foresaw a future full of worrisome change and potential decline. The national destiny seemed threatened externally by powerful foreign rivals and internally by an urban mass culture incapable of generating the talent and character needed to sustain the national fibre, let alone Britain's world leadership. In the Empire the realities of international rivalry and indigenous resistance to western imperialism forced the pace of formal colonization, and from the British perspective the problem was how to administer an established and expanding multiracial empire inhabited by peoples of exotic ap- pearances and strange habits who were apparently unsuited to the advanced practices of Victorian civilization.

Late-Victorian scientists, as evidenced by the membership of the An- thropological Institute and the contents of its Journal, helped forge a common link between the domestic and imperial crises by identifying issues of race and class as questions of heredity and environment. This link is most clearly seen in the work and patronage of Galton and in the connection between the per- sonalities and ideas of anthropology in the 1880s and the eugenics movement in the Edwardian period. Similarly, a continuity exists between the anthropometry of the 1880s and the psychometrics of the 1920s. 50 By the 1880s, at least for the professional specialists who saw themselves as natural scientists, environmentalism was on the losing side of the nature/nurture argu- ment. It was weakened in part by the assaults of the pseudo-scientists, the polygenetic racial typologists of the 1850s and '60s, but the strength of nature over nurture derived more from the changed social and political context of the 1880s and '90s. Biological determinism offered simple and universal explanations for complex historical changes, and by analogy to nature favoured winners and survivors over losers and victims. Furthermore, these ideas car- ried the new professional authority of science and had at hand its institutional apparatus for the dissemination of the message of racial supremacy.

Wilfrid Laurier University

50 Stepan, pp. 111-139; Paul Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1986), pp. 92-119.

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theoretical racism in late-victorian anthropology, 1870-1900

Documents

view of victorian racism

victorian scientists

jstor terms

victorian studies

jstor archive

latevictorian anthropology

late victorian anthropology

theory of common origins