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The Authority of Nature Race, Heredity, and Crime 1800–1940

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The Authority of Nature Race, Heredity, and Crime 1800–1940 The Authority of Nature Race, Heredity, and Crime 1800–1940 Starting with the second half of the eighteenth century, power relationships between peoples on earth, the growing and dramatic division between dominant nations and nations that were dominated, or even eliminated, and indeed the foundations of social inequalities, were increasingly seen by western naturalists and intellectuals as inevitable (albeit, to some, unpleasant) features of the order of nature. Racial weakness was regarded as inscribed in the shape of human skulls, individual deficiencies in the traits of human faces. Across the world, as within societies, every human group and individual occupied the place that nature had assigned to it. The attempt to ground political and social phenomena on the authority of nature preceded the advent of Darwinism in the 1860s. It could indeed be claimed that the immediate and chaotic spread of Social Darwinism within the Western world simply reflected the widespread presence of attitudes and beliefs for which Charles Darwin, often unwittingly, provided authoritative scientific evidence. Darwin himself, in the last analysis, shared many of the presuppositions of his self-appointed and at times extreme followers, and predicted that many populations of the earth would disappear as the inevitable, albeit regrettable consequence of natural laws regulating the relationships between nations. Yet, the “natural” triumph of the “civilizing” imperial western powers was not granted. Once again, the struggle for life and natural selection had to be called upon to express anxieties about the stability of the social order. The mounting aggressiveness of the “dangerous classes” and the fertility of the lower orders were jeopardizing the efforts of the “natural” elites that were responsible for civilization and imperial advances. The superior races had to exercise control over the less endowed ones, in the same way as the social elites had to carefully monitor demographic and political transformations that in the long term would endanger the survival of the race itself. Chronic illnesses, moral insensitivity, atavist aggressiveness had to be curbed through a rigid control of immigration and reproduction. New ways to investigate dangerous traits emerging in social groups would have led to scientifically based preventive actions. Racial anthropology found its parallel in criminal anthropology and criminology. Crime was seen as a natural phenomenon for which, often, there was no cure. Individuals as well as crowds often showed the survival of traits that characterized previous stages in the development of society, or in the natural history of man. “Beastly behaviours” and “savage crimes” became expressions that summed up a widespread climate of opinion. The survival of nations depended on their capacity to steer the reproductive flow and to isolate and possibly eliminate the danger that lethal traits would further spread throughout society. To some legislative bodies, such as the State of Indiana in 1907 and 1927, forced sterilisation appeared as a benign solution capable of stopping the spread of dangerous individual traits. To National Socialist political and scientific leaders in Germany, sterilization had to be accompanied by stronger measures, such as forced isolation and straightforward physical elimination. A strong State had to take strong measures to survive and to lead. Has the tragic lesson of negative eugenics during the 1930s and the early 1940s been learnt? A final lecture will be devoted to the periodic resurgence of attitudes appealing to the authority of nature and of science to explain complex social and historical phenomena. Is intelligence hereditary, geographically and socially distributed, and can “science” prescribe social norms and suggest political measures? Tutors: Pietro Corsi, Ruth Harris, Graham Baker 2 I. Prelude: The races of man, 1750–1900 A New Science of Man Skulls, faces, and races Monogenism vs. Polygenism Races and climates Races and cultures Immanuel Kant, “On the Distinctiveness of Races in general”, in E.W. Count, ed., This is Race, An Anthology Selected from the International Literature on the Races of Man, New York, Henry Schuman, 1950, pp. 16-24 (equivalent of 11pp) Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, from On the Natural Variety of Mankind, Section IV, “Five principal varieties of mankind, one species”, in E.W. Count, ed., This is Race, An Anthology Selected from the International Literature on the Races of Man, New York, Henry Schuman, 1950, pp. 34-39 (equivalent 8pp) Johann Caspar Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy, for the Promotion of the Knowledge and Love of Mankind, 2 vols, London, C. Whittingham, 1804, vol. 2, pp. “On Sculls”, pp. 205- 228 (equivalent of 12 pp.); vol. 3, “National Physiognomy”, pp. 85-125 (equivalent of 22pp) William Lawrence, “On the Causes of the Varieties of the Human Species”, from Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man (1819), in E.W. Count, ed., This is Race, An Anthology Selected from the International Literature on the Races of Man, New York, Henry Schuman, 1950, pp. 51-59 (equivalent of 15pp) Julien-Joseph Virey, J.J. “Natural History of the Negro Species Particularly” (1835), in A. F. Augstein, ed. , Race. The Origin of an Idea, 1760-1850, London, Thoemmes Press Press, 1996, pp. 163-80 Louis Agassiz, “The Diversity of Origin of the Human Races”, The Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany, XLIX (1850), pp. 110-145, available on line Robert Knox, Races of Man: A Fragment (London, Henry Renshaw, 1850), pp. 447-467, Races of Man. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Influence of Race over the Destinies of Nations, 2nd edn, London, Henry Renshaw, 1862, pp. 588-600 (32pp.) A. Retzius, “A glance at the present state of ethnology, with reference to the form of the skull”, in British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review 25 (1860), pp. 503-514, available on line Paul Broca, “On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo”, in E.W. Count, ed., This is Race, An Anthology Selected from the International Literature on the Races of Man, New York, Henry Schuman, 1950, pp. 68-74 3 Recommended secondary sources: Kidd, C., The Forging of Races. Race and Scripture in the Protestant World, 1600-2000, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, Chapters 4 and 5 John C. Greene, The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought, Ames, Iowa State Press, 1981 Stephen J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, New York and London, W. W. Norton, 1981, especially Ch. 3, “Measuring Heads: Paul Broca and the Heyday of Craniology” George W. Stocking, Race, culture and evolution : essays in the history of anthropology, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1982 Douglas Lorimer, “Nature, Racism and Late Victorian Science,” Canadian Journal of History XXV (1990), pp. 369-85. Claudio Pogliano, “Between Form and Function: A New Science of Man”, in P. Corsi, ed., The Enchanted Loom. Chapters in the History of Neuroscience, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 144-203 John van Wyhe, Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism. Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2004. Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Gender, Race, and Nation: The Comparative Anatomy of ‘Hottentot’ women in Europe:1815-1817,” in J. Terry and J. Urla, eds., Deviant Bodies, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1995, pp.19-48. II. Darwinism and mankind The struggle for life and the economy of nature Darwin and mankind Natural selection Darwin on Man Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, London J. Murray, 1830-1833, vol. II, 1832, Chapters I- XI, in particular Chapter VIII, pp. 123-141, available on line. Charles Darwin, a selection of his views on man from several books and his correspondence, available on line, 10 pp. Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, ed. And abridged by Janet Browne and Micale Neve, Penguin Books, 1989, Ch. 11, “… Feugians ..” pp.171-184 Darwin, C. R. 1882. The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. London, John Murray, 1st ed., 1871, use new Penguin Classics edition, ed. by James Moore and Adrian Desmond, 2004, Chapter VII, “On the Races of Man”, pp. 194-240 James Bonwick, The Last of the Tasmanians, or the Black War of Van Diemen’s Land, London, Sampson, Law, Son and Marston, 1870, Ch.12, “Native Rights”, pp. 324-330 and Ch 13, “Civilization”, pp. 334-354 and 360-369 4 Thomas Henry Huxley, “On the Method and Results of Ethnology”, 1865, in E.W. Count, ed., This is Race, An Anthology Selected from the International Literature on the Races of Man, New York, Henry Schuman, 1950, pp. 107-122 Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation, or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes, 2 vols., London, King & Sons, 1876, vol. 2, pp. 334-369 Two useful websites for further readings: The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/ Darwin Correspondence Project, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/ Recommended secondary sources: H. Gruber, and P. H. Barrett, Darwin on man. A psychological study of scientific creativity, London, Wildwood House, 1974. Sandra Herbert, “The place of man in the development of Darwin’s theory of transmutation : Part I. To July 1837”, Journal of the History of Biology., VII (1974), pp. 217-58 and “Part II”, X (1977), pp. 155-227. Gregory Claeys, “‘The Survival of the Fittest’ and the Origins of Social Darwinism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, LXI (2000), pp. 223-240 Sven Lindqvist, “Exterminate all the brutes”, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate, London, Granta, 2002. James Moore and Adrian Desmond, “Introduction”, in C. Darwin, The descent of man, Penguin Classics, 2004 Recommended biographies of Charles Darwin: Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, London, Michael Joseph, 1991 Janet Browne, Charles Darwin, vol. 1, Voyaging, Vol. 2, The Power of Place, London, Jonathan Cape, 1995-2002 5 III. Darwinism and societies: Social Darwinism Societies as organisms The biological foundations of power Social Darwinism in Europe The “cooperation” vs.
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