The Rights of Man

and the Eighteenth Century

The Enlightenment

5 Age of Enlightenment

5.1 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Pre-Kantian Thought

From Montaigne to Descartes

The concept of ‘‘race’’ is a modern one, and the sustained

study of it in the United States emerged when proponents

of the institution of slavery needed scientists to

defend that institution from religious abolitionists, who

called for the unity of God’s children, and from Enlightenment

critics, who called for liberty, fraternity, and

equality of man.

During the early colonial experience in

North America, ‘‘race’’ was not a term that was widely

employed. Notions of difference were often couched in

religious terms, and comparisons between ‘‘heathen’’ and

‘‘Christian,’’ ‘‘saved’’ and ‘‘unsaved,’’ and ‘‘savage’’ and

‘‘civilized’’ were used to distinguish African and indigenous

peoples from Europeans. Beginning in 1661 and

continuing through the early eighteenth century, ideas

about race began to circulate after Virginia and other

colonies started passing legislation that made it legal to

enslave African servants and their children.

The Social Contract 1

From Hobbes to Locke

The Kantian Revolution

Kant

The first use of the term "anthropology" in English to refer to a natural science of humanity was

apparently in 1593, the first of the "logies" to be coined.[27] It took Immanuel Kant 25 years to write one of

the first major treatises on anthropology, his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.[28] Kant is not

generally considered to be a modern anthropologist, however, as he never left his region of Germany nor did

he study any cultures besides his own, and in fact, describes the need for anthropology as a corollary field to

his own primary field of philosophy.[29] He did, however, begin teaching an annual course in anthropology

in 1772. Anthropology is thus primarily an Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment endeavor.

Most scholars[citation needed] consider modern anthropology as an outgrowth of the Age of

Enlightenment, a period when Europeans attempted systematically to study human behavior, the known

varieties of which had been increasing since the 15th century as a result of the first European colonization

wave. The traditions of jurisprudence, history, philology, and sociology then evolved into something more

closely resembling the modern views of these disciplines and informed the development of the social

sciences, of which anthropology was a part.

Developments in the systematic study of ancient civilizations through the disciplines of Classics and

Egyptology informed both archaeology and eventually social anthropology, as did the study of East and

South Asian languages and cultures.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was a German philosopher who encouraged the examination of man’s inner

self rather than making inferences about the inner self based upon the exterior physical self. [28] In 1775,

Kant published Of the Different Human Races which proposed natural or purposive causes of variation, as

opposed to mechanical law or a product of chance. He distinguished four fundamental races: Whites, Blacks,

Kalmuck, and Hindustanic, and attributed the variation to differences in environment and climate, such as

the air and sun, but clarified by saying that the variation served a purpose and was not purely superficial.

Kant argued that human beings were equipped with the same seeds (Keime) and the natural predispositions

or characteristics (Anlagen) that were expressed were dependent upon climate and served a purpose due to

the circumstance. After this process had occurred, it was also irreversible. Therefore, race could not be

undone by changes in climate. “Whichever germ was actualized by the conditions, the other germs would

retire into inactivity."

Kant wrote On the Different Races of Man (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen, 1775), as an

attempted scientific classification of human races.

Kant stated:

The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them, and at the lowest point are a

part of the American people.[29]

Lord Kames

Lord Kames was a polygenist, he believed God had created different races on earth in separate

regions. In his book Sketches on the History of Man in 1734 Home claimed that the environment, climate, or

state of society could not account for racial differences, so that the races must have come from distinct,

separate stocks.[30]

Friedrich Hegel

Friedrich Hegel

Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) presented a strong evolutionist account of history in the Lectures on the

Philosophy of History (Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, 1837) chronicling the

development of the historical Geist (Spirit) through serial realisations of Volkgeister (Folk Spirits).

Hegel's philosophy of history was explicitly biased towards Europe, especially the Prussian state, conceived

as the ultimate historical achievement, i.e. the End of History. In his chapter on the "Geographical Foundings

of Universal History" Hegel said that "each People represented a particular degree of the development of the

Spirit", thus forming a "nation"; however, that nationalism is not based upon racial (physical) particularities,

rather it concerns the historico–geographic site where the Geister unfold. Informed by Montesquieu's theory

of climatologic influence upon cultural mores and law Hegel developed in The Spirit of the Laws (1748),

contrasting historical peoples with ahistoric savages:

It is true that climate has influence, in that sense that neither the warm zone, nor the cold zone, are

favourable to the liberty of man, and to the apparition of historical peoples.[31]

Unsurprisingly, Hegel thus favoured the Geist in temperate zones, and finally wrote an account of "universal

history" chronicling the Oriental World, the Greek Antiquity, the Roman, the Christian World, and the

Prussian World.[32] In the same Lectures he said that "America is the country of the future", yet "philosophy

does not concern itself with prophecies", but with history.[33] Hegel’s philosophy, like that of Kant, cannot

be reduced to evolutionist statements, nevertheless, it justified European imperialism until the First World

War (1914–18). Likewise, some of Montesquieu’s œuvre justified "scientifically-ground" Negro inferiority

consequent to the climate’s influence.

Hegel declared that:

Africa is no historical part of the world." Hegel further claimed that blacks had no "sense of personality; their

spirit sleeps, remains sunk in itself, makes no advance, and thus parallels the compact, undifferentiated mass

of the African continent.[34]

The Rise of the Biological Sciences

From Schleirmacher to Herder

In 1735 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus completed

his first edition of Systema Naturae, in which he

attempted to differentiate various types of people scientifically.

He identified humans as a single species within the

primate family and did not explicitly rank types of people

within a hierarchy. However, his value-laden judgments

that Europeans were ‘‘governed by laws’’ while Africans

were ‘‘governed by caprice’’ reinforced ideas that European

society was the apex of Christian civilization (Linnaeus

1997 [1735], p.13).

Herder

Programs of ethnographic study originated in this era as the study of the "human primitives"

overseen by colonial administrations.

There was a tendency in late 18th century Enlightenment thought to understand human society

as natural phenomena that behaved according to certain principles

and that could be observed empirically.

In some ways,

studying the language, culture, physiology, and artifacts of European colonies

was not unlike studying the flora and fauna of those places.

At the same time, the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment produced thinkers, such as

Johann Gottfried Herder

and later Wilhelm Dilthey, (see later)

whose work formed the basis for the "culture concept," which is central to the discipline.

At the same time, the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment produced thinkers such as Herder and

later Wilhelm Dilthey whose work formed the basis for the culture concept which is central to the discipline.

Although the bureau, which was called the Office of Indian Affairs, was formed in 1824, similar

agencies had existed in the U.S. government as far back as 1775, when a trio of Indian agencies were created

by the Second Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry were among the early

commissioners, who were charged with negotiating treaties with Native Americans and obtaining their

neutrality during the American Revolutionary War. In 1789, the United States Congress placed Native

American relations within the newly-formed War Department.

Polygenism is a theory of human origins positing that the human races are of different lineages

(polygenesis). This is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity.

Charles Darwin and Race

Though Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory was set forth in 1859 upon publication of On the Origin of

Species, this work was largely absent of explicit reference to Darwin’s theory applied to man. This

application by Darwin would not become explicit until the publication of his second great book on evolution,

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, in 1871.

Darwin’s publication of this book occurred within the heated debates between advocates of monogeny, who

held that all races came from a common ancestor, and advocates of polygeny, who held that the races were

separately created. Darwin, who had come from a family with strong abolitionist ties, had experienced and

was disturbed by cultures of slavery during his voyage on the Beagle years earlier. Noted Darwin

biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore argue that Darwin’s writings on evolution were not only

influenced by his abolitionist tendencies, but also his belief that non-white races were equal in regard to their

intellectual capacity as white races, a belief which had been strongly disputed by scientists such as Morton,

Agassiz and Broca, all noted polygenists.

By the late 1860s, however, Darwin’s theory of evolution had been thought to be compatible with the

polygenist thesis (Stepan 1982). Darwin thus used Descent of Man to disprove the polygenist thesis and end

the debate between polygeny and monogeny once and for all. Darwin also used it to disprove other

hypotheses about racial difference that had persisted since the time of ancient Greece, for example, that

differences in skin color and body constitution occurred because of differences of geography and climate.

Darwin concluded, for example, that the biological similarities between the different races were “too great”

for the polygenist thesis to be plausible. He also used the idea of races to argue for the continuity between

humans and animals, noting that it would be highly implausible that man should, by mere accident acquire

characteristics shared by many apes.

Darwin sought to demonstrate that the physical characteristics that were being used to define race for

centuries (i.e. skin color and facial features) were superficial and had no utility for survival. Because,

according to Darwin, any characteristic that did not have survival value could not have been naturally

selected, he devised another hypothesis for the development and persistence of these characteristics. The

mechanism Darwin developed is known as sexual selection.

Though the idea of sexual selection had appeared in earlier works by Darwin, it was not until the late 1860s

when it received full consideration (Stepan 1982). Furthermore, it was not until 1914 that sexual selection

received serious consideration as a racial theory by naturalist thinkers.

Darwin defined sexual selection as the “struggle between individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the

possession of the other sex”. Sexual selection consisted of two types for Darwin: 1.) The physical struggle

for a mate, and 2.) The preference for some color or another, typically by females of a given species. Darwin

asserted that the differing human races (insofar as race was conceived phenotypically) had arbitrary

standards of ideal beauty, and that these standards reflected important physical characteristics sought in

mates.

Broadly speaking, Darwin’s attitudes of what race was and how it developed in the human species are

attributable to two assertions, 1.)That all human beings, regardless of race share a single, common ancestor

and 2.) Phenotypic racial differences are superficially selected, and have no survival value. Given these two

beliefs, some believe Darwin to have established monogenism as the dominant paradigm for racial ancestry,

and to have defeated the scientific racism practiced by Morton, Knott, Agassiz et. Al, as well as notions that

there existed a natural racial hierarchy that reflected inborn differences and measures of value between the

different human races. Nevertheless he stated: : “The various races, when carefully compared and measured,

differ much from each other - as in the texture of hair, the relative proportions of all parts of the body, the

capacity of the lungs, the form and capacity of the skull, and even the convolutions of the brain. But it would

be an endless task to specify the numerous points of difference. The races differ also in constitution, in

acclimatization and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct;

chiefly as it would appear in their emotion, but partly in their intellectual faculties” (The Descent of Man,

chapter VII).

In The Descent of Man, Darwin noted the great difficulty naturalists had in trying to decide how many

"races" there actually were:

Man has been studied more carefully than any other animal, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity

amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three

(Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven

(Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as

sixty-three, according to Burke. This diversity of judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be

ranked as species, but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover

clear distinctive characters between them.

[edit] Origins

Many oral traditions feature polygenesis in their creation stories, for example Bambuti mythology and other

creation stories from the pygmies of Congo state that the supreme God of the pygmies, Khonvoum, created

three different races of man separately out of clay: one black, one white, and one red.[1]

The idea is also found in some ancient Greek and Roman literature. For example the Roman Emperor Julian

the Apostate in his Letter to a Priest wrote that he believed Zeus made multiple creations of man and

women.[2] In his Against the Galilaens Julian presented his reasoning for this belief. Julian had noticed that

the Germanics and Scythians (northern nations) were different in their bodies (i.e complexion) to the

Ethiopians. He therefore could not imagine such difference in physical attributes as having originated from

common ancestry, so maintained separate creations for different races.

In early classical and medieval geography the idea of polygenism surfaced because of the suggested

possibility of there being inhabitants of the antipodes (Antichthones). These inhabitants were considered by

some to have separate origins because of their geographical extremity.[3]

Robert Argod a navy sailor wrote a book in which he claimed Polynesian mythology supported polygenesis,

that the Polynesian peoples and later Asiatic people had originated from the Antarctica, separate from the

other races.[4]

The religion of the Ainu people claims that the ancestors of the Ainu people arrived on earth from the skys

separate from the other races. See (Ainu creation myth).

[edit] Main beliefs

Most Christians have taught monogenism that a single mating pair named Adam and Eve gave birth to all of

humanity, polygenists do not accept this position because they believe it does not explain why there is such a

big variation of human races, polygenists do not believe that Adam and Eve being one race could give birth

to all of the races on earth, polygenists believe this to be biological impossible. Polygenists view the racial

differences between each race to be too great to accept that all men derive from the same stock. Those who

support polygenism cite the existence of interspecies hybrids such as mules in rebuttal to the argument that

human races must belong to a single species because they can interbreed. Polygenists cite scientific evidence

from racial variations in skin colour, stature, head shape and size to prove that the only logical scientific

explanation for different races is separate origins. There have been a number of polygenist theories, the two

most popular are biblical creationist polygenism and polygenist evolution, both are attempts to solve the race

origin problems of monogenism.[5] [6]

[edit] Polygenism and the Bible

Biblical polygenists (creationists) believe that human races have been created separately in different zones

by God. They utilize such theories as PreAdamite creation or CoAdamism to explain the existence of

different races.

Biblical polygenists believe that the races are, like other species, fixed in form. They believe that each human

race was created to survive in its own ecosystem: that each race was placed by God in a specific zoological

province, together with fauna specific to those regions. Biblical polygenists believe there is no way that

racial variations in skin colour, stature, head shape and size could have developed over six thousand or even

(if one did not literally interpret the Bible) thirty or forty thousand years.

Biblical polygenists such as John William Colenso, Louis Agassiz, Josiah Clark Nott, George Gliddon,

maintained that many of the races on earth, such as Negros and Asians, were not featured in the Bible or the

Table of Nations outlined in Genesis 10 because when the Hebrews wrote the Bible they had no knowledge

of any other races' existence except their own. Biblical polygenists claim the Bible was written in just a

single region of the world and that the Hebrews who wrote the Bible could not have known about anything

or anyone outside their own region. An example of this is Josiah Clark Nott, who in his books claimed that

the writers of the Bible had no knowledge of any races except themselves and their immediate neighbors,

and that the Bible does not concern the whole of the earth's population. According to Nott there are no verses

in the Bible which support monogenism and that the only passage the monogenists use is Acts 17:26, but

according to Nott the monogenists are wrong in their interpretation of this verse because the "one blood" of

Paul's sermon only includes the nations he knew existed, which were local.[7]

There are two forms of Biblical polygenism: PreAdamism and CoAdamism.[8]

PreAdamism claims there were already races of man living prior to the creation of Adam. By contrast,

CoAdamism claims that there was more than one Adam or small group of men created at the same time in

different places across the earth, and therefore that the different races were separately created. The idea of

CoAdamism has been traced back as far as Paracelsus in 1520.[9] Other 16th century advocates of

CoAdamism included Thomas Harriot and Walter Raleigh, who theorised a different origin for the Native

Americans.[10]

Lucilio Vanini was a polygenist, who argued that Africans are descended from apes because of their skin

colour, while other races did not. In his book De Admirandis Naturae Reginae Deaeque Mortalium Arcanis

(1616) he wrote that that only the Negro descends from the monkey and that there are lower and higher

levels within humanity (a race hierarchy), he also reported in the book that other atheists supported this

position as opposed to the theory of monogenism.[11] [12]

Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600), a CoAdamist, believed that there was an infinite number of Gardens of

Eden:

I can imagine an infinite number of worlds like the Earth, with a Garden of Eden on each one. In all these

Gardens of Eden, half the Adams and Eves will not eat the fruit of knowledge, and half will. But half of

infinity is infinity, so an infinite number of worlds will fall from grace and there will be an infinite number of

crucifixions[13]

In 1591 Giordano Bruno argued that because no one could imagine that the Jews and the Ethiopians had the

same ancestry, then God must have either created separate Adams or Africans were the descendants of pre-

Adamite races.[14]

PreAdamism traces back to Isaac La Peyrère in the 17th century (see Preadamites).

An anonymous Biblical paper supporting CoAdamism was published in 1732 entitled Co-adamitae or an

Essay to Prove the Two Following. Paradoxes, viz. I. That There Were Other Men Created at the Same time

with Adam, and II. That the Angels did not fall.[15]

Henry Home, Lord Kames was a believer in CoAdamism.[16] Home believed God had created different

races on earth in separate regions. In his book Sketches on the History of Man in 1734 Home claimed that the

environment, climate, or state of society could not account for racial differences, so that the races must have

come from distinct, separate stocks.[17]

Charles White (physician) was another key advocate of CoAdamism, although he used less theology to

support his views.[18] Charles White's Account of the Regular Gradation in Man in 1799, provided the

empirical science for polygenism. White defended the theory of polygeny by refuting French naturalist

George Louis de Buffon's interfertility argument—the theory that only the same species can interbreed—

pointing to species hybrids such as foxes, wolves and jackals, which were separate groups that were still able

to interbreed.[19]

In Christianity, polygenesis remained an uncommon Biblical interpretation. Until the mid-19th century,

polygenism was largely considered heretical; however, it has been pointed out by some modern scholars that

while PreAdamism was strongly rejected by most and deemed heretical, CoAdamism was not received with

the same degree of hostility.[20]

A major reason for the emergence of Biblical polygenism from around the 18th century was because it

became noted that the number of races could not have developed within the commonly-accepted Biblical

timeframe. Voltaire brought the subject up in his Essay on the Manner and Spirit of Nations and on the

Principal Occurrences in History in 1756 (which was an early work of comparative history). Voltaire was a

French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher, he was also a polygenist. He believed each race had

separate origins because they were so racially diverse. Voltaire found biblical monogenism laughable, as he

expressed:

It is a serious question among them whether the Africans are descended from monkeys or whether the

monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a

lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will

doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and

gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything.[21]

When comparing Caucasians to Negros, Voltaire claimed they are both different species:

The negro race is a species of men different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds.

The mucous membrane, or network, which nature has spread between the muscles and the skin, is white in us

and black or copper-colored in them.[22]

Charles Hamilton Smith a naturalist from England was a polygenist, he believed races had been created

separately. He published the book The Natural History of the Human Species in 1848. In the book he

maintained that there had always been three fundamentally distinct human types: The Caucasian, the

Mongolian and the Negro. He also referred to the polygenist Samuel George Morton's work in America.[23]

Smith’s book was re-printed in America, Samuel Kneeland (naturalist) wrote an 84-page introduction to the

American edition of the book where he laid out evidence which supports polygenist creationism and that the

Bible is entirely compatible with multiple Adams.[24]

Francis Dobbs (1750–1811), an eccentric member of the Irish Parliament, believed in a very different kind of

biblical polygenism. In his Concise View from History written in 1800 he maintained that there was a race

resulting from a clandestine affair between Eve and the Devil (see Serpent Seed).

John William Colenso a theologian and biblical scholar was a polygenist who believed in CoAdamism.

Colenso pointed to monuments and artifacts in Egypt to debunk monogenist beliefs that all races came from

the same stock. For example, Ancient Egyptian representations of races showed exactly how the races looked

in his time. Egyptological evidence indicated the existence of remarkable permanent differences in the shape

of the skull, bodily form, colour and physiognomy between different races which are difficult to reconcile

with biblical monogenesis. Colenso believed that racial variation between races was so great, that there was

no way in which all the races could have come from the same stock just a few thousand years ago. He was

unconvinced that climate could change racial variation and also believed, in common with other biblical

polygenists, that monogenists had interpreted the Bible wrongly.[25]

Colenso said “It seems most probable that the human race, as it now exists, had really sprung from more than

one pair”. Colenso denied that polygenism caused any kind of racist attitudes or practices, like many other

polygenists he claimed monogenesis was the cause of slavery and racism. Colenso claimed that each race

had sprung from a different pair of parents, and that all races been created equal by God.[25]

Polygenism was heavily criticized in the 20th century Roman Catholic Church, and especially by Pope Pius

XII in the encyclical Humani Generis, who felt that polygenism was incompatible with the doctrine of

Original Sin.

[edit] Scientific polygenism

During the late 1600's and early 1700's many countries first began to encounter different races from other

countries due to colonial expansion, discovery, overseas exploration (due to the advancement of ships) and

increases in trade routes. Because of the encounters with different races, many people could not believe that

they had the same ancestry of other races because of the extreme racial differences. Many explorers and

scientists visited other countries to observe and study different races and write down their findings, later they

went back to their own countries to publish books and journals on their findings and claim that the evidence

supported polygenism.[26] [27]

Some polygenists of the 18th century were Voltaire and David Hume.

Voltaire in his book 1734 book Traité de métaphysique said “Whites...Negroes...the yellow races are not

descended from the same man”.[28]

John Atkins an English naval surgeon was one of the earliest scientists to be a proponent of the polygenist

theory. In his book A Voyage to Guinea (1723) he said “I am persuaded that the black and white race have

sprung from different coloured parents.”[28]

In the last two decades of the 18th century polygenism was advocated in England by historian Edward Long

and anatomist Charles White, in Germany by ethnographers Christoph Meiners and Georg Forster, and in

France by Julien Virey. Polygenism was very popular and most widespread in the 19th century.[29]

Georges Cuvier the French naturalist and zoologist racial studies influenced scientific polygenism and

scientific racialism. Cuvier believed there were three distinct races the Caucasian (white), Mongolian

(yellow) and the Ethiopian (black), Cuvier claimed Adam and Eve were Caucasian and that was the original

race of mankind, and the other two races originated by survivors escaping in different directions after a

major catastrophe hit the earth 5,000 years ago, with those survivors then living in complete isolation from

each other.[30] [31]

Cuvier insisted that the Caucasian skull was most beautiful. He divided humanity into three races, white,

yellow and black all which receive marks for their beauty or ugliness of their skull and quality of their

civilizations. According to Cuvier the White race was at the top and the black race was at the bottom.[32]

Cuvier wrote regarding Caucasians:

The white race, with oval face, straight hair and nose, to which the civilised people of Europe belong and

which appear to us the most beautiful of all, is also superior to others by its genius, courage and activity.[33]

Regarding Negros, Cuvier wrote:

The Negro race... is marked by black complexion, crisped of woolly hair, compressed cranium and a flat

nose, The projection of the lower parts of the face, and the thick lips, evidently approximate it to the monkey

tribe: the hordes of which it consists have always remained in the most complete state of barbarism.[34]

Cuvier's racial studies held the main features of polygenism which are as follows:[35]

Fixity of species

Strict limits on environmental influence

Unchanging underlying type

Anatomical and cranial measurement differences in races

Physical and mental differences between racial worth

Human races are all distinct

Scientific Polygenism became popular in France in the 1820s in response to James Cowles Prichard's

Researches into the Physical History of Man (1813) which was considered a pioneering work of

monogenism.[36] In response an entire anthropological school advocating polygenism was set up to counter

Prichard's monogenism in France.[37] Key French polygenists of this period included the naturalist Jean

Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent and Louis-Antoine Desmoulins (1796–1828) a student of Georges Cuvier.

[38]

Anders Retzius a Swedish professor of anatomy was a polygenist. Retzius studied many different skull types

from different races, because the skulls were so different from each race he believed that the races had a

separate origin.[39]

Polygenist schools were later set up in the 1830s and 1840s across Europe. The Scottish anatomist and

zoologist Robert Knox was considered to be the 'founding father' of scientific polygenism in Britain and he

argued in his Races of Man (1850) that racial natures never changed and therefore must have been created

separately.[40] A colleague of Knox, James Hunt, was also an early author who promoted polygenism in

Britain, though he was more concerned with establishing white superiority. Hunt dedicated his On the

negro's place in nature (1863) to Knox who had died a year before its publication.[41]

John Crawfurd a Scottish physician, and colonial administrator was a polygenist, he studied the geography of

where different races were located, he believed that that different races had been created separately by God

in specific regional zones for climatic circumstance.[42]

Charles Caldwell was one of the earliest supporters of polygenism in America. Caldwell attacked the

position that environment was the cause of racial differences and argued instead that four races, Caucasian,

Mongolian, American Indian, and African, were four different species, created separately by God.[43]

Charles Pickering (naturalist) was the librarian and a curator of the Academy of Natural Sciences. In 1843,

he traveled to Africa and India to research human races. In 1848, Pickering published Races of Man and

Their Geographical Distribution, which enumerated eleven races.

Indigenous Races of the Earth (1857), Josiah Clark Nott and George Robins Gliddon implied that "Negroes"

were a creational rank between "Greeks" and chimpanzees.

Polygenism came into mainstream scientific thought in America in the mid 19th century due to the work of

several corresponding natural scientists such as Samuel George Morton and Charles Pickering as well as

Egyptologist George Gliddon, the surgeon Josiah Clark Nott and more prominently the paleontologist and

geologist Louis Agassiz in the United States. All had contributed to a major ethnological work of 738 pages

entitled Types of Mankind which was published in 1854[44] and was a great success, this was followed by a

sequel Indigenous Races of the Earth (1857). Both these works sparked the first formal Polygenist vs.

Monogenist debates across America, and advocates of the polygenism school became known as pluralists.

As Louis Agassiz backed the pluralists, polygenism received mainstream public approval and wide exposure

during the 1840s-1860's. Numerous articles promoting polygenist views were published in the American

Journal of Science and Arts during this time period.[45]

The archeologist Ephraim George Squier helped Morton’s polygenism by excavating an ancient cranium

from the midwestern mounds and sending a drawing of it to Morton. Morton found its similarities striking to

Central and South American crania, confirming his belief that the American Indian nations had a common

and indigenous origin. Morton’s polygenism explicitly stated the Mound Builders were an American Indian

race of great antiquity, they did not migrate from Asia, and their physical form has remained essentially

unchanged in their descendants.[46] Both Squier and Gliddon demonstrated for Morton the permanence of

racial characteristics, and the suitability of each race to the region for which it had been created.

American Indians supported Morton's conclusions, whilst some white archaeologists supported Morton

others such as William Pidgeon did not accept Morton's conclusions because at the time some white

archaeologists such as Pidgeon could not believe that Native Americans had created the archaeological

remains they saw around them, instead William Pidgeon wrote a book called Traditions of Dee-Coo-Dah and

Antiquarian Researches in 1858.[47] In the book Pidgeon attempts to prove that a vanished race, culturally

superior to and existing earlier than the American Indians, occupied America first and that The Mound

Builders were not Native Americans. Pidgeon's book was revealed mostly to be a hoax. The famed

archaeologist Theodore H. Lewis later revealed that Pidgeon had fabricated most of his research, and

distorted much of the rest of it, mapping mounds where none existed, and changing the arrangement of

existing mound groups to suit his needs.[48] Morton's work gained more support because his work was

considered to be evidence of true objective science unlike others such as Pidgeon. Morton won his reputation

as the great data-gatherer and objectivist of American Science. Oliver Wendell Holmes praised Morton for

"The severe and cautious character" of his works, which "from their very nature are permanent data for all

future students of ethnology".[49]

By 1850 Agassiz had developed a unique form of CoAdamism. God he believed had created several different

zoological provinces with different races in them, but also fauna and animals specific to those regions. An

essay of Agassiz promoting this theory with maps of the zoological zones was attached as a preface to Types

of Mankind in collaboration with Morton, Gliddon, Nott and others.[50] Agassiz's theory developed some

support amongst Christians, and he often wrote articles in Christian magazines claiming his views on

polygenism were compatible with the bible.[51] Christian fundamentalists however who held to Young Earth

Creationism and strict monogenism (i.e everyone on earth from Adam and Eve) attacked his views, as well

as those of Gliddon and Nott.[52]

Unlike Josiah Nott, the slave-owner from Alabama,[53] Agassiz was never a supporter of slavery. He

claimed his views had nothing to do with politics.[54]

The notion that races were separate and came together by hybridism, rather than being variations from a

common stock, received its death knell with the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, which

Agassiz opposed till his death. But as Darwin did not address man's origin directly at this stage, the argument

continued for a number of years, with the creation of the Anthropological Society of London in 1863 in the

shadow of the American civil war, in opposition to the abolitionist Ethnological Society. The

Anthropologicals had the Confederate agent Henry Hotze permanently on their council.[55] The two

societies did not heal their differences until they merged in 1871 to form the Anthropological Institute.

Georges Pouchet the French naturalist and anatomist was a polygenist. Pouchet made contributions in several

scientific fields, and specialised in comparative anatomy of fishes and whales. He was a prime advocate of

polygeny, and was the author of an anthropological work titled De la Pluralité des Races Humaines (1858),

which was translated into English as The Plurality of the Human Race in 1864 by the Anthropological

Society.

John Thurnam an English psychiatrist, archaeologist, and ethnologist with Dr. Joseph Barnard Davis

published a work in two volumes under the title of Crania Britannica in 1865 it was a very important work

for Craniometry. Both Thurnam and Davis were polygenists. Dr. Joseph Barnard Davis was a collector of

racial crania he had a collection of over 1700 specimens.[56] Because of the differences of the crania of each

race, Davis and Thurnam believed that the proofs of polygenism were to be found in studying the skull types

of different races. Because each race had a different size and type of skull then the only logical explanation is

separate origins.[57] Davis also wrote Thesaurus craniorum: catalogue of the skulls of the various races of

man in 1875.

[edit] Polygenist evolution

Polygenist evolution is the belief that humans evolved independently from separate species of apes. This can

be traced back to Karl Vogt in 1864. Polygenist evolution allowed polygenists to link each race to an

altogether different ape, this was shown in the work Hermann Klaatsch and F. G. Crookshank.[58]

Karl Vogt believed that the Negro was related to the ape. He believed the White race was a separate species

to Negros. In Chapter VII of his lectures of man (1864) he compared the Negro to the White race whom he

described as “two extreme human types”. The difference between them, he claimed are greater than those

between two species of ape; and this proves that Negros are a separate species from the Whites.[59]

In an unusual blend of contemporary evolutionary thinking and pre-Adamism the theistic evolutionist and

geologist Alexander Winchell argued in his 1878 book Adamites and Preadamites for the pre-Adamic origins

of the human race on the basis that the Negroes were too racially inferior to have developed from the Biblical

Adam. Winchell also believed that the laws of evolution operated according to the will of God.[60]

Before Darwin published his theory of evolution and common descent in his Origin of Species (1859)

scientific theories or models of Polygenism (such as Agassiz's) were strictly creationist. Even after Darwin's

book was published, Agassiz still stuck to his scientific form of polygenist creationism and denounced the

idea of evolution. However by the late 19th century most scientific polygenists had abandoned Agassiz's

creationism and began to embrace polygenist forms of evolution. This even included many students of

Agassiz, including Nathaniel Shaler who had studied under Agassiz at Harvard.[61] Shaler continued to

believe in polygenism, but believed the different races evolved from different primates. The prominent

French anthropologist Paul Broca by 1878 had also converted from creationist polygenism to accepting a

form of polygenist evolution.[62]

In his work The Descent of Man (1871) Charles Darwin and some of his supporters argued for the

monogenesis of the human species, seeing the common origin of all humans as essential for evolutionary

theory. This is known as the single-origin hypothesis. Darwin even dedicated a chapter of his The Descent of

Man in attempt to refute the polygenists and support common ancestry for all races. Polygenist evolution

views however continued into the early 20th century, and still found support amongst prominent scientists.

Henry Fairfield Osborn for example in his The Origin and Evolution of Life (1916) claimed blacks and

whites both evolved off different primates.[63]

Alfred Russell Wallace influenced polygenist evolution he claimed that the physical differences in races must

have occurred at such a remote time in the past before humans had any intelligence, when natural selection

was still operative on human bodies. The differentiation into separate races with distinct physical traits must

have happened so soon after humans had just appeared on earth that for all practical purposes all races had

always been distinct.[64]

In contrast to most of Darwin's supporters, Ernst Haeckel put forward a doctrine of evolutionary polygenism

based on the ideas of the linguist and polygenist August Schleicher, in which several different language

groups had arisen separately from speechless prehuman Urmenschen, which themselves had evolved from

simian ancestors. These separate languages had completed the transition from animals to man, and, under the

influence of each main branch of languages, humans had evolved as separate species, which could be

subdivided into races. Haeckel divided human beings into ten races, of which the Caucasian was the highest

and the primitives were doomed to extinction.[65]

Ernst Haeckel claimed that Negros have stronger and more freely movable toes than any other race which is

evidence that Negros are connected to apes because when apes stop climbing in trees they hold on to the

trees with their toes, Haeckel compared Negros to “four-handed” apes. Haeckel also believed Negros were

savages and that Whites were the most civilised.[59]

"The different human races developed from different breeds of ape...the following eight pages show starling

resemblances between types of ape and different human races" - The Beginning Was the End, 1971.

Franz Weidenreich originated the "Weidenreich Theory of Human Evolution" which is a form of polygenist

evolution. The Weidenreich Theory states that human races have evolved independently in the Old World

from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens sapiens, while at the same time there was gene flow between the

various populations. According to the Weidenreich Theory, genes that were generally adaptive (such as those

for intelligence and communication) would flow relatively rapidly from one part of the world to the other,

while those that were locally adaptive, would not. This is contrary to popular theories of human evolution

that have one superior race displacing other races. A vocal proponent of the Weidenreich theory was Carleton

Coon.

In the late 20th century, the work of the paleoanthropologist Carleton Coon was the closest to what can be

perhaps considered a "modern" polygenism by positing that the individual races of the earth separately

evolved into modern Homo sapiens. This hypothesis, called the candelabra theory, was not very popular

when it was presented in the mid-1960s. It is often confused with the multiregional hypothesis, but these two

theories differ significantly in that Coon's candelabra model involves no gene flow between populations (so

truly independent evolutions for races of humans) while the multiregional hypothesis is based on the idea of

massive amounts of gene flow between human populations.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin the French philosopher believed in polygenist evolution. Teilhard did not believe

in the creation of the Biblical first man, Adam and the first woman, Eve, he taught that there were many

'First Parents' who evolved from primates at one time.[66]

In 1971 The Beginning Was the End was published by Oscar Kiss Maerth which argued different races

sprung from different types of ape. The book is considered to be pseudoscience.

Neo-evangelical theistic evolutionist John Stott wrote in his 1984 book Understanding the Bible: ‘My

acceptance of Adam and Eve as historical is not incompatible with my belief that several forms of pre-

Adamic ‘hominid’ seem to have existed for thousands of years previously. It is conceivable that God created

Adam out of one of them. I think you may even call some of them Homo sapiens".[67]

[edit] Modern adherents

A tenet of Raëlism holds that the different races of humans were created by separate teams of

extraterrestrial scientists.[68]

Several minor Christian groups still embrace Biblical polygenism (Preadamism or Coadamism).[69]

[edit] See also

Multiregional hypothesis

Polygenesis (linguistics)

Historical definitions of race

Monogenesis

Man as an Instinctual Being

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), who naturalistically attributed civilizational primacy to the white races

who gained sensitivity and intelligence via the refinement consequent to living in the rigorous North climate;

to wit:

The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, are found exclusively

among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste, or race, is fairer in colour than the

rest, and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmins, the Inca, and the rulers of the

South Sea Islands. All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention, because those tribes

that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual

powers, and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want, and misery, which, in their many

forms, were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of

nature, and out of it all came their high civilization.[35]

Romantics

Smith, Hegel and Marx

Most 19th-century social theorists, including anthropologists, viewed non-European societies as

windows onto the pre-industrial human past.

Institutionally, anthropology

emerged from the development of natural history (expounded by authors such as Buffon)

that occurred during the European colonization of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Institutionally anthropology emerged from natural history (expounded by authors such as Buffon). This was

the study of human beings - typically people living in European colonies. Thus studying the language,

culture, physiology, and artifacts of European colonies was more or less equivalent to studying the flora and

fauna of those places. It was for this reason, for instance, that Lewis Henry Morgan could write monographs

on both The League of the Iroquois and The American Beaver and His Works. This is also why the material

culture of 'civilized' nations such as China have historically been displayed in fine arts museums alongside

European art while artifacts from Africa or Native North American cultures were displayed in Natural

History Museums with dinosaur bones and nature dioramas. Curatorial practice has changed dramatically in

recent years, and it would be wrong to see anthropology as merely an extension of colonial rule and

European chauvinism, since its relationship to imperialism was and is complex.

The Social Contract2: Montesquieu and Rousseau

The Age of Revolutions: All Men are Created Equal but Some are more Equal than Others

Immigration into the United States

Main article: History of immigration to the United States

American immigration history can be viewed in four epochs:

the colonial period,

the mid-nineteenth century,

the turn of the twentieth,

and post-1965.

Each period brought distinct national groups, races, and ethnicities to the United States.

During the seventeenth century,

approximately 175,000 Englishmen migrated to Colonial America.[10]

Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America

during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants.[11]

The mid-nineteenth century saw mainly an influx from northern Europe;

the early twentieth-century mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe;

post-1965 mostly from Latin America and Asia.

Historians estimate that less than one million immigrants—perhaps as few as 400,000—crossed the Atlantic

during the 17th and 18th centuries.[12]

The 1790 Act limited naturalization to "free white persons";

it was expanded to include blacks in the 1860s

and Asians in the 1950s.[13]

In the early years of the United States,

immigration was fewer than 8,000 people a year,[14]

including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti.

The American Constitution and Racism

The same year that Thomas Jefferson penned the

Declaration of Independence and claimed, as self-evident,

‘‘that all men are created equal’’ Johann Blumenbach published

On the Natural Varieties of Mankind, in which he

divided the human race into separate and unequal varieties.

It was Blumenbach who provided the four basic racial

categories that people still grapple with in the early

twenty-first century: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian,

and American (he later added a fifth category, Malayan).

Despite his claims about the unity of humanity, Blumenbach

viewed Europeans as the most advanced, and he

argued that all other varieties degenerated from Caucasians,

which he believed was ‘‘the most handsome and becoming’’

type (Blumenbach 1997 [1776], p. 84).

Enlightenment scientists helped to shift the discussion

of human difference from the ecclesiastical to the natural

world, but this did little to reduce institutional racism. In

fact, scientific racism flourished in the wake of the French

and American revolutions. In North America, the lofty

ideals of equality, freedom, and liberty could not be reconciled

with the institution of slavery and the acquisition of

indigenous land. In Europe, meanwhile, these ideals did

not square with colonialism and anti-Semitism. Indeed, the

fraternity of those who were equal and free was exclusive:

women, children, and the insane were always excluded

from the rights and privileges of citizenship and equality

under the law, and many began to turn to the science of

ethnology to exclude nonwhite men as well (Fredrickson

2002, p. 68). People who had a stake in maintaining the

Anthropology, History of

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RACE AND RACISM 93

idea that all people had inalienable rights and a stake in

maintaining racial inequality found scientific categories of

race useful because those who were deemed racially inferior

were also deemed incapable of shouldering the responsibilities

of citizenship and thus did not qualify for rights and

privileges—rights and privileges were contingent upon the

responsibilities of citizenship.

Stated differently, only men of the ‘‘superior’’ white

race were considered fully capable, while members of

inferior races and all women were not equal, not free,

did not have liberty, and could not be citizens. For

example, Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on the State of

Virginia, turned to the language of ethnology to advance

the notion ‘‘that the blacks, whether originally a distinct

race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are

inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body

and mind.’’ Jefferson was clear that one should and could

clearly rank the races and keep them ‘‘as distinct as nature

has formed them’’ (1996 [1781], p.143).

Despite using race to justify inequality, most enlightenment

thinkers still believed in the doctrine of ‘‘monogenetic

origins,’’ of a single creation of all humanity.

Although beliefs in monogenism were neither coherent

nor consistent, ideas of human unity did not of themselves

imply equality, and consequently monogenism did

not necessarily support arguments for the abolition of

slavery and the sovereignty of indigenous nations.

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 – 22 January 1840) was a German physician, physiologist

and anthropologist, one of the first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history, whose

teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to classification of what he called human races, of which he

determined five.

Anthropometry is the scientific study of variation in the

size and shape of the human body. Anthropometric data

have been used both to justify the belief in human biological

‘‘races’’ and to discredit this erroneous belief. This

entry provides an overview of anthropometry and its

relationship with ‘‘race’’ and racism.

EARLY ANTHROPOMETRIC BELIEFS

The earliest written records about human size date from

about 3500 BCE in Sumeria. Several texts from this

period mention a positive relationship between health,

social status, and stature. The Sumerians were thus surprisingly

astute, for this essentially echoes the current

biocultural view of the causes of variation in human body

size and shape. Groups of people growing and developing

under social, economic, and cultural conditions that

foster better nutrition and health tend to be, on average,

taller and have longer arms and legs than groups of

people growing up under less favorable sociocultural

conditions. After more than a century of scientific

research, this view may seem commonsensical, but it

has not always been so.

The philosophers of the ancient Greeks, such as Plato

and Aristotle (c. 350 BCE), considered living people and

their cultures to be imperfect copies of an ideal type of

physical human being and sociocultural system. The variation

in body size and shape among various cultures was

seen to be a consequence of the degree of imperfection

within different societies. The Greeks of ancient Athens

believed that they were closest to the ideal, and that the

people of other societies were less perfect. However, the

Greeks did not believe in the concept of ‘‘race,’’ of fundamental

biological divisions of humankind. Rather, they

accepted the unity of all humankind.

MODERN ANTHROPOMETRY

The term ‘‘anthropometry’’ was coined by Johann Sigismund

Elsholtz (1623-1688), who also invented an

anthropometer, a device for measuring stature and the

length of body parts such as arms and legs. Elsholtz was

interested in testing the notion of the Greek physician

Hippocrates (460?–357 BCE) that differences in body

proportion were related to various diseases. In 1881, the

French anthropologist Paul Topinard (1830–1911)

applied anthropometry to the study of human ‘‘races,

so as to distinguish them and establish their relations to

each other’’ (Topinard 1881, p. 212).

Another line of racial investigation was craniology,

the study of the skull. The Dutch physician Petrus

Camper (1722–1789) and his followers measured various

angles of the facial bones to determine the race and sex of

skulls. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), a

German naturalist and anthropologist, identified five

‘‘races,’’ based on a visual inspection of skull shape and

size. One of these was named the ‘‘Caucasian race,’’ based

on skulls from the Caucasus Mountains region of Georgia.

Blumenbach believed that the living people of Georgia

were the closest to the original form of the primordial

Caucasian type, with European Caucasians being the

next closest to the original.

Anthropometry

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was born at Gotha, studied medicine at Jena and then Göttingen, graduating

from the latter 1775 with his M.D. thesis De generis humani varietate nativa (On the Natural Variety of

Mankind, University of Göttingen, first published in 1775, re-issued with changings of the title-page in

1776), which is considered one of the most influential works in the development of subsequent concepts of

"human races."[1] [2]

He was appointed extraordinary professor of medicine and inspector of the museum of natural history in

Göttingen in 1776 and ordinary professor in 1778. His later works included Institutiones Physiologicae

(1787), and Handbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie (1805). In 1812 he was appointed secretary to the Royal

Society of Sciences at Göttingen, in 1816 became Obermedizinalrat, in 1821 was made a knight-commander

of the Guelphic Order, and in 1831 was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. In celebration

of his doctoral jubilee (1825) traveling scholarships were founded to assist talented young physicians and

naturalists. In 1813, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1835

he retired. Blumenbach died in Göttingen in 1840.[2]

[edit] Blumenbach's racial classification system

Blumenbach's five races.

Blumenbach divided the human species into five races in 1779, later founded on crania research (description

of human skulls), and called them (1793/1795):

the Caucasian race or white race

the Mongolian or yellow race

the Malayan or brown race

the Ethiopian, or black race

the American or red race.

His classification of Mongolian race included all East Asians and some Central Asians. Blumenbach

excluded peoples of Southeast Asian islands and Pacific Islanders from his definition in 1779, as he

considered them to be part of the Malay race. He considered American Indians to be part of the American

(Indigenous peoples) race. He did not think they were inferior to the Caucasian race, and were potentially

good members of society. He included the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa in the Negro or black race.

Blumenbach argued that physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile, etc., were depended on

geography and nutrition and custom.

Blumenbach's work included his description of sixty human crania (skulls) published originally in fascicules

as Decas craniorum (Göttingen, 1790–1828). This was a founding work for other scientists in the field of

craniometry.

Further anatomical study led him to the conclusion that 'individual Africans differ as much, or even more,

from other individual Africans as Europeans differ from Europeans'. Furthermore he concluded that Africans

were not inferior to the rest of mankind 'concerning healthy faculties of understanding, excellent natural

talents and mental capacities'.[3]

"Finally, I am of opinion that after all these numerous instances I have brought together of negroes of

capacity, it would not be difficult to mention entire well-known provinces of Europe, from out of which you

would not easily expect to obtain off-hand such good authors, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of the

Paris Academy; and on the other hand, there is no so-called savage nation known under the sun which has so

much distinguished itself by such examples of perfectibility and original capacity for scientific culture, and

thereby attached itself so closely to the most civilized nations of the earth, as the Negro."[4]

These ideas were far less influential. His ideas were adopted by other researchers and encouraged scientific

racism.[5] Blumenbach's work was used by many biologists and comparative anatomists in the nineteenth

century who were interested in the origin of races: Wells, Lawrence, Prichard, Huxley and William Flower

are good examples of his influence on human biology.

[edit] Study of the platypus

Blumenbach was also one of the first scientists to study the anatomy of the platypus. He gave the scientific

name Ornithorhynchus paradoxus to the animal not knowing that George Shaw had given it the name

Platypus anatinus. However, Platypus had already been shown to be used for the scientific name for a genus

of Ambrosia beetles so Blumenbach's scientific name for the genus was used.[6]

[edit] Study of natural history

Blumenbach wrote a manual of natural history entitled Handbuch der Naturgeschichte; 12 editions and some

translations. It was published first in Göttingen by J. C. Dieterich in 1779/1780.

[edit] Study of the chimpanzee

In his dissertation Blumenbach mentioned a name Simia troglodytes with a short description for the Common

Chimpanzee. This dissertation was printed and appeared in September 1775, but only for internal use in the

University of Göttingen and not for providing a public record. The public print of his dissertation appeared in

1776.[7] Blumenbach knew that Linnaeus had already established a name Homo troglodytes for a badly

known primate, and in 1779 he discussed this Linnean name and concluded correctly that Linnaeus had been

dealing with two species, a human and an orangutan, none of them was a chimpanzee, and that by

consequence the name Homo troglodytes could not be used. Blumenbach was one of the first scientists to

understand the identities of the different species of primates, which were, excluding humans, orangutans and

chimpanzees (gorillas were not known to Europeans at this time). In Opinion 1368 the ICZN Commission

decided in 1985 that Blumenbach's view should be followed, and that his Simia troglodytes as published by

Blumenbach in 1779 shall be the type species of the genus Pan and, since it was the oldest available name

for the Common Chimpanzee, be used for this species.[8] However, the Commission did not know that

Blumenbach had already mentioned this name in his dissertation. Following the rules of the ICZN Code the

scientific name of one of the most well-known African animals, currently known as Pan troglodytes, must

carry Blumenbach's name comined with the date 1776.[9]

[edit] Degeneration theory

Blumenbach and other monogenists such as Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon were believers in the

"degeneration theory" of racial origins. Blumenbach claimed that Adam and Eve were Caucasian and that

other races came about by degeneration from environmental factors such as the sun and poor dieting—for

instance, he claimed Negroid pigmentation arose because of the result of the heat of the tropical sun, while

the cold wind caused the tawny colour of the Eskimos, and the Chinese were fair skinned compared to the

other Asian stocks because they kept mostly in towns protected from environmental factors.[10] He believed

that the degeneration could be reversed if proper environmental control was taken and that all contemporary

forms of man could revert to the original Caucasian race.[11]

Blumenbach did not consider his "degeneration theory" as racist and sharply criticized Christoph Meiners, an

early practitioner of scientific racialism as well as Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring who concluded from

autopsies that Africans were an inferior race. [12]

He also wrote three essays claiming non-white peoples are capable of excelling in arts and sciences in

reaction against racialists of his time who believed they couldn't.[13]

Scientific racism

Craniometry

Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.[1]

This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among

the humans and argue that there are races. In biological classification differences between animal groups are

investigated without necessarily claiming that one group is superior to others. Racism or racial supremacy is

the additional claim that some races are superior to other races.

However, scientific racism is often used more narrowly as a synonym for the contemporary and historical

theories that employ anthropology (notably physical anthropology), anthropometry, craniometry, and other

disciplines, in fabricating anthropologic typologies supporting the classification of human populations into

physically discrete human races that are claimed to be superior or inferior, specifically in a historical context

of ca. 1880 to 1930. Scientific racism was thus most common during the New Imperialism period (ca.

1880s–1914), in the second half of the 19th century, and used in justifying white European imperialism.

After the end of the Second World War (1939–45) and the occurrence of the Holocaust, scientific racism in

theory and action was formally denounced, especially in UNESCO's antiracist statement "The Race

Question" (1950): "The biological fact of race and the myth of ‘race’ should be distinguished. For all

practical social purposes ‘race’ is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth. The myth of 'race'

has created an enormous amount of human and social damage. In recent years, it has taken a heavy toll in

human lives, and caused untold suffering." However, the statement acknowledged that different human races

exist.[2] Beginning in the later 20th century, scientific racism has been criticized as obsolete, and as

historically used to support or validate racist world-views, based upon belief in the existence and

significance of racial categories and a hierarchy of superior and inferior races.[3]

The term "scientific racism" is pejorative as applied to contemporary theories, such as in The Bell Curve

(1994), claiming that scientific evidence shows significant evolutionary differences among human races and

ethnic groups. Critics argue that such works are motivated by racist presumptions unsupported by available

evidence. Publications such as the Mankind Quarterly, founded as an explicitly "race-conscious" publication,

have been accused of scientific racism for publishing articles on controversial interpretations of human

evolution, intelligence, ethnography, language, mythology, archaeology, and race subjects.[4] The pejorative

label, "scientific racism", criticizes studies claiming to establish a connection between, for example, race and

intelligence, and argues that this promotes the idea of "superior" and "inferior" human races.[5] Recent

authors consider their work to be scientific and dispute use of the term "racism"; they may prefer terms such

as "race realism" or "racialism".

Origins of scientific racism

See also: Race (historical definitions)

Homo monstrosus Patagonian giants: Voyage au pole sud et dans l'Océanie (Voyage to the South Pole, and in

Oceania), by Jules Dumont d'Urville

Robert Boyle

In the 18th century, racialist written works proposed geographically based "scientific" differences among

"the races"; notably, 17th- and 18th-century interpretations of natural history excluded the concept of

evolution. In the 17th century, the historian Henri de Boulainvilliers (1658–1722) divided the French as two

races: (i) the aristocratic "French race" descended from the invader Germanic Franks, and (ii) the indigenous

Gallo-Roman race (the political Third Estate populace). The Frankish aristocracy dominated the Gauls by

innate right of conquest, the contrary of modern nationalism.

In his time, Henri de Boulainvilliers, a believer in the "right of conquest", did not understand "race" as

biologically immutable, but as a contemporary (racist) cultural construct. His racialist account of French

history was not entirely mythical: despite "supporting" hagiographies and epic poetry, such as The Song of

Roland (La Chanson de Roland, ca. 12th c.), he sought scientific legitimation by basing his racialist

distinction on the historical existence of genetically and linguistically distinguished Germanic and Latin-

speaking peoples in France. His theoretic racialism was distinct from the biologic facts manipulated in 19th-

century scientific racism. (cf. Cultural relativism)

An early scientist who studied race was Robert Boyle, a 17th century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist,

and inventor. Boyle believed in monogenism, that is, that all races, no matter how diverse, came from the

same source, Adam and Eve. He studied reported stories of parents' giving birth to different coloured albinos,

and he believed that Adam and Eve were originally white and that Caucasians could give birth to different

coloured races. His views were described as both as "disturbing" and "amusing" and were rejected by the

scientific community.[6]

During the Enlightenment period, concepts of monogenism and polygenism became popular. In these

theories of racial origins, monogenism contends that all races have a single origin, while polygenism is the

idea that each race has a separate origin.

Carl Linnaeus

Carolus Linnaeus, (J. H. Scheffel, 1739)

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the physician, botanist, and zoologist, who established the taxonomic bases of

binomial nomenclature for fauna and flora, was a pioneer researcher in biologically defining "human race".

In Systema Naturae (1767), he established five human-race taxa: (i) the Americanus, (ii) the Asiaticus, (iii)

the Africanus, (iv) the Europeanus, and (v) the Monstrosus, based upon geographic origin and skin color.

Each race possessed innate physiognomic characteristics: the Americanus were red-skinned, of stubborn

character, and angered easily; the Africanus were black-skinned, relaxed, and of negligent character; the

Asiaticus race were yellow-skinned, avaricious, and easily distracted; whereas, unlike the character-

imbalanced colored people, the Europeanus were white-skinned, of gentle character, inventive mind, and

bellicose; and the Monstrosus were mythologic human sub-races.[7]

The sub-races were the "four-footed, mute, hairy" Homo feralis (Feral man); the animal-reared Juvenis

lupinus hessensis (Hessian wolf boy), the Juvenis hannoveranus (Hannoverian boy), the Puella campanica

(Wild-girl of Champagne), and the agile, but faint-hearted Homo monstrosus (Monstrous man) sub-races: the

Patagonian giant, the Dwarf of the Alps, and the monorchid Khoikhoi (Hottentot). In Amoenitates

academicae (1763), Linnaeus presented the Homo anthropomorpha (Anthropomorphic man) race of

mythologic, humanoid creatures, such as the troglodyte, the satyr, the hydra, and the phoenix, incorrectly

identified as simian creatures.

Georges Cuvier

Georges Cuvier

Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) the French naturalist and zoologist racial studies influenced scientific

polygenism and scientific racialism. Cuvier believed there were three distinct races the Caucasian (white),

Mongolian (yellow) and the Ethiopian (black). He thought Adam and Eve were Caucasian and that was the

original race of mankind, and the other two races arose by survivors' escaping in different directions after a

major catastrophe hit the earth 5,000 years ago. He theorized that the survivors lived in complete isolation

from each other and developed separately.[8] [9]

Cuvier thought the Caucasian skull was the most beautiful shape. He divided humanity into three races:

white, yellow and black, and rated each for the beauty or ugliness of the skull and quality of their

civilizations. According to Cuvier, a European, the White race was at the top, and the black race was at the

bottom.[10]

Cuvier wrote about Caucasians (Europeans):

The white race, with oval face, straight hair and nose, to which the civilised people of Europe belong and

which appear to us the most beautiful of all, is also superior to others by its genius, courage and activity.[11]

Regarding Negros, Cuvier wrote:

The Negro race... is marked by black complexion, crisped of woolly hair, compressed cranium and a flat

nose, The projection of the lower parts of the face, and the thick lips, evidently approximate it to the monkey

tribe: the hordes of which it consists have always remained in the most complete state of barbarism.[12]

Blumenbach and Buffon

Johan Friedrich Blumenbach

Johann Blumenbach from Germany and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon from France were

believers in monogenism, the concept that all races have a single origin. They also believed in the

"Degeneration theory" of racial origins. They both said that Adam and Eve were Caucasian and that other

races came about by degeneration from environmental factors, such as the sun and poor dieting. They

believed that the degeneration could be reversed if proper environmental control was taken, and that all

contemporary forms of man could revert to the original Caucasian race.[13]

They thought Negroid pigmentation arose because of the heat of the tropical sun. They suggested cold wind

caused the tawny colour of the Eskimos. They thought the Chinese relatively fair skinned compared to the

other Asian stocks because they kept mostly in towns and were protected from environmental factors. Buffon

said that food and the mode of living could make races degenerate and distinguish them from the original

Caucasian race.[13]

According to Blumenbach, there are five races, all belonging to a single species: Caucasian, Mongolian,

Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach said:

I have alotted the first place to the Caucasian because this stock displays the most beautiful race of men.[14]

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon believed humanity was only 6000 years old (the time since Adam).

Many scientific racialists pointed out at the time that it would have been difficult for races to change so

markedly in genotype and phenotype in such a short period of time. Believing in mongenism, Buffon thought

that skin colour could change in a single lifetime, depending on the conditions of climate and diet.[15]

John Hunter

John Hunter (1728–1793), a Scottish surgeon, said that originally the Negroid race was White at birth. He

thought that over time because of the sun, the people turned dark skinned, or "black". Hunter also said that

blisters and burns would likely turn white on a Negro, which he believed was evidence that their ancestors

were originally White.[16]

Christoph Meiners

Christoph Meiners

Christoph Meiners (1747–1810) was a polygenist;, he believed that each race had a separate origin. He was a

very early practitioner of scientific racialism. Meiner studied the physical, mental and moral characteristics

of each race, and built a race hierarchy based on his findings. Meiners split mankind into two divisions,

which he labelled the "beautiful White race" and the "ugly Black race". In Meiners' book The Outline of

History of Mankind, he said that a main characteristic of race is either beauty or ugliness. He thought only

the White race (excluding Slavs) to be beautiful. He considered ugly races to be inferior, immoral and animal

like. He said that the dark ugly peoples were distinct from the white beautiful peoples by their "sad" lack of

virtue and their "terrible vices".[17]

According to Meiners:

The more intelligent and noble people are by nature, the more adaptable, sensitive, delicate and soft is their

body; on the other hand, the less they possess the capacity and disposition towards virtue, the more they lack

adaptability; and not only that, but the less sensitive are their bodies, the more can they tolerate extreme pain

or the rapid alteration of heat and cold; the they are exposed to illnesses, the more rapidly, their recovery

from wounds that would be fatal for more sensitive peoples, and the more they can partake of the worst and

most indigestible foods ... without noticeable ill effects.[18]

Meiners said the Negro felt less pain than any other race and lacked in emotions, Meiners wrote that the

Negro had thick nerves and thus was not sensitive like the other races, he went as far to say that the Negro

has “no human, barely any animal feeling” he described a story where a Negro was condemned to death by

being burned alive, half way through the burning the Negro asked to smoke a pipe and smoked it like

nothing was happening while he continued to be burned alive. Meiners studied the anatomy of the Negro and

came to the conclusion that the Negro have bigger teeth and jaws than any other race, as the Negro are all

carnivores. Meiners claimed the skull of the Negro was larger but the brain of the Negro was smaller than

any other race. Meiners claimed the Negro was the most unhealthy race on earth because of the Negro's poor

diet, mode of living and lack of morals.[19]

Meiners also claimed the "Americans" (by which he meant American Indians) were an inferior stock of

people. He said they could not adapt to different climate, different types of food or modes of life, and that

when exposed to such new conditions, they lapse into a “deadly melancholy”. Meiners studied the diet of the

Americans, and said they fed off any kind of “foul offal”. He thought they consumed very much alcohol. He

believed their skulls were so think that the blades of Spanish swords shattered on them. Meiners also claimed

the skin of an American is thicker than an ox.[20]

Meiners wrote that the most noblest race was the Celts, and they were able to conquer various parts of the

world, were more sensitive to heat and cold and their delicacy is shown by the way they are selective about

what they eat. Meiners claimed Slavs are an inferior race, "less sensitive and content with eating rough

food”, he described stories of Slavs eating poisonous fungi without coming to any harm. He claimed that

their medical techniques were also backwards: he used as an example their heating sick people in ovens, then

making them roll in the snow.[21]

In Meiners' large work entitled Researches on the Variations in Human Nature (1815), he studied the

sexology of each race. He claimed that the African Negroids have unduly strong and perverted sex drives,

whilst only the White Europeans have it just right.

Voltaire

Voltaire

Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher, he was also a polygenist. He believed

each race had separate origins because they were so racially diverse. Voltaire found biblical monogenism

laughable, as he expressed:

It is a serious question among them whether the Africans are descended from monkeys or whether the

monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a

lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will

doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and

gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything.[22]

When comparing Caucasians to Negros, Voltaire claimed they are both different species:

The negro race is a species of men different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds.

The mucous membrane, or network, which nature has spread between the muscles and the skin, is white in us

and black or copper-colored in them.[23]

John Mitchell

The colonial American doctor John Mitchell took up a study of climate and race and wrote a book in 1744

called An Essay upon the Causes of the Different Colours of People in Different Climates in the book he

claimed that the first race on earth had been a brown and reddish colour, he said "that an intermediate tawny

colour found amongst Asiatics and Native Amerindians" had been the “original complexion of mankind” and

that others races came about by the original race spending generations in different climates.[24]

Ebenezer Sibly

Ebenezer Sibly an English physician and astrologer wrote a book called Universal System of Natural History

in 1794 in the book he claimed that the White Race was the first on earth he said “We must consider white as

the stock whence all others have sprung, Adam and Eve and all their posterity, till the time of the deluge

were white; in the first age of the world no black nation was to be found on the face of the earth.” Sibly

believed that no humans had reached Africa till after the dispersal from Babel, that the continents first

inhabitants had been white and that Africans had become dark only as a result of the actions of the climate

there over successive generations.[26]

Some Anti-Racist Voices

Several Enlightenment scholars, however, used the

language of ethnology and scientific methods in an

attempt to prove that racial differences were inconsequential

and that it was a fool’s errand to rank the races and

view racial differences in terms of inferior and superior.

For example, Samuel Stanhope Smith (1751–1819), a

Presbyterian minister and the president of Princeton University,

passionately argued that blacks and whites shared

innate characteristics.

Samuel Stanhope Smith

Samuel Stanhope Smith wrote an essay titled Essay on the Causes of Variety of Complexion and Figure in

the Human Species in 1787, in the essay Smith claimed that Negro pigmentation was nothing more than a

huge freckle that covered the whole body as a result of an oversupply of bile, which was caused by tropical

climates.[25]

He persuasively documented how

‘‘it is impossible to draw the line precisely between the

various races,’’ explaining that it would be ‘‘a useless labor

to attempt it’’ (1810 [1787], p. 240). Benjamin Rush, a

prominent Philadelphia physician who signed the Declaration

of Independence, was certain that science and Christianity

both demonstrated the ‘‘original and natural

equality of all mankind’’ (1987 [1798], p. 686).

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Rush a Founding Father of the United States and a physician proposed that being black was a

hereditary skin disease, which he called "negroidism," and that it might be cured. Rush believed non-whites

were really white underneath but they were stricken with a non-contagious form of leprosy which darkened

their skin color. Rush drew the conclusion that "Whites should not tyrannize over [blacks], for their disease

should entitle them to a double portion of humanity. However, by the same token, whites should not

intermarry with them, for this would tend to infect posterity with the 'disorder'... attempts must be made to

cure the disease."[27]