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Proto-Eugenic Thinking Before Galton Proto-Eugenic Thinking Before Galton. Washington: Christoph Irmscher (Indiana University Bloomington) and Maren Lorenz (University of Hamburg/German Historical Institute Washington), 25.09.2008-27.09.2008. Reviewed by Christoph Irmscher Published on H-Soz-u-Kult (December, 2008) In the preface to the revised edition of his his‐ precirculated, and participants were asked to give tory of eugenics, In the Name of Eugenics, Daniel only brief summaries of their main arguments. Kevles suggests that the heyday of eugenics is The frst panel addressed “The Genealogy of over. Where there was eugenics, there is genetics. Eugenic Thought.” SABINE KALFF examined the And there is no chance, he says, that “the revolu‐ proposals for human improvement in two early tion in human molecular genetics will be turned modern Italian utopian texts, Tommaso Cam‐ to eugenic ends.” Kevles’ preface was written in panella’s La Città del Sole (1600-1603) and 1995. Since then, the new challenges posed by pre‐ Francesco Patrizi’s Città Felice (1553). Foucault re‐ natal diagnostics, the human genome project, and peatedly used the metaphor of the shepherd tak‐ cloning have put paid to his prediction. They have ing care of his fock as a paradigm for the ruler’s also changed the parameters of the academic de‐ spiritual hold over the souls of his state, but Kalff bate about eugenics, extending not only its tradi‐ insisted on the literal importance of this popular tional geographical scope but also its convention‐ model for early modern writers. Both Campanella al temporal framework. Pace the common notion and Patrizi relied on the contemporary practices of eugenics as a phenomenon of the late 19th and of animal husbandry to make suggestions for hu‐ early 20th centuries, scholars have now realized man improvement. But while in Campanella’s ide‐ that concepts of "human breeding" or of the "per‐ al state the moment of conception itself had to be fection of the human race" were being developed regulated - to the extent that intercourse after din‐ throughout Western Europe long before Francis ner had to be avoided because the “spirits” were Galton, designated the “founder of the faith” in still busy digesting - Patrizi, in a kind of pre- Kevles’s book, published Hereditary Genius in Lamarckian mode, expressed his belief that the 1869. mother’s temperament (as well as her mental When we convened the workshop, our hope state during pregnancy, physical exercise and en‐ was that we could nudge the study of human vironment) had an influence on the embryo’s de‐ breeding from its traditional anglocentric empha‐ velopment, too. sis in the direction of a more unabashedly multi‐ JOHN WALLER’s paper gave an overview of a national (and less temporally limited) model. To larger, historically oriented study he is currently that end, we also wanted to leave as much time writing, in which he traces elements of eugenic for conversations as possible: all the papers were thoughts throughout western history, as reflected, for example, in the medieval concern for lineage. H-Net Reviews Galton, stated Waller, was only “recapitulating an The second panel (“Debating the Hybrid”) fo‐ elitist attitude that had already pervaded Euro‐ cused on the bête noir (no pun intended) of all pean social thought for millennia.” Of course, as those eager proponents of racial purity, the hy‐ was pointed out after Waller’s paper, the vast ar‐ brid. At the heart of SARA FIGAL EIGEN’s paper chive such a comprehensive topic demands was a conundrum. Drawing on multiple eigh‐ makes generalizations virtually impossible. Nev‐ teenth-century sources, among them the travel ertheless, the undeniable heuristic force of writer Jean Chardin, Figal delved into the geneal‐ Waller’s argument generated an animated ex‐ ogy of the label “Caucasian,” that monolithic- change of views. Waller’s “long view” of eugenics seeming racial category that would come to be served to highlight what, arguably, was so dismal‐ used as a yardstick by which self-appointed racial ly innovative about the nineteenth-century inter‐ theorists determined the inferiority of other est in racial purity: the ability and willingness of races. But, as Figal claimed, the original European the state to interfere actively (through legislation was not European at all but the racially ambigu‐ and prosecution) in the reproductive decisions of ous Circassian woman. Figal’s paper elicited a its citizens. lively debate, chock-full of suggestions as to how SANDER GLIBOFF concluded the panel by of‐ this paradox might be “tamed.” fering a more uplifting view of nineteenth-centu‐ Figal’s comments on the “hybrid” origin of ry thinking about racial multiplicity, a legacy he modern racial classifications provided a useful claimed had been suppressed or distorted by transition to CHRISTOPH IRMSCHER’s contribu‐ twentieth-century historians. Framing his paper tion on the role of the “halfbreed” in the science as a defense of the great late nineteenth-century of Louis Agassiz, once the world’s most famous evolutionary biologist and philosopher, Ernst scientist. Using Agassiz’s correspondence with the Haeckel, Gliboff set out to rehabilitate nineteenth- physician and abolitionist Samuel Gridley Howe century morphology. Concentrating on the work and the papers of the American Freedmen’s In‐ of three leading morphologists, Johann Friedrich quiry Commission, Irmscher attempted to show Meckel, the Younger, Heinrich Georg Bronn, and that the mixed-race black remained was the void Haeckel himself, Gliboff explained that for them at the center of American antebellum racial dis‐ improvement or “Vervollkommnung” did not course, inaccessible to both a polygenist racist like mean a single, vertical path towards perfection of Agassiz and a freedom-fighting abolitionist like the species but “Mannigfaltigkeit,” i.e., many lines Howe. On behalf of the American Freedmen’s In‐ of differentiation and complex interdependencies quiry Commission, Howe later traveled to Canada, among the disparate routes of development. where he found ailing mulattoes and their ailing Clearly, the eugenics movement did not initially offspring, further proof to him that, “in the strug‐ adopt the same pluralistic conceptions of progress gle for life,” some must and will fall by the way‐ and improvement; neither did it value differentia‐ side. Unlike Agassiz, the anthropologist Henry tion, diversity, and interdependence. Questions Lewis Morgan did not reject amalgamation per se, about Gliboff’s paper centered on Haeckel’s diffi‐ as BRAD HUME pointed out in the paper that con‐ cult concept of race that, to some participants, did cluded the panel. Morgan remained committed to retain traces of hierarchical order, as seemed evi‐ the idea of the controlled interbreeding of Native dent in Haeckel’s graphs. But Gliboff argued that and Euro-Americans, because he was convinced the placement of certain races on Haeckel’s evolu‐ that such unions would improve both the mental tionary tree did not imply value and seemed to and the physical make-up of the whites. However, shift in subsequent revisions. while Morgan denied the “hereditary legitimacy” 2 H-Net Reviews of slavery, he also definitively excluded blacks Johann Peter Frank’s multivolume Medizinische from the racial enhancement he envisioned. Polizey (1779-1819) - provided her with a frame‐ The frst day of the conference ended with a work within which to address similar debates in panel devoted to “Intercultural Perspectives on early nineteenth-century America, where contrib‐ Proto-Eugenics.” Extending our time frame, utors to medical and phrenological journals FRANK STAHNISCH talked about the personal and seemed to be concerned early on with the degen‐ academic connections between European psychi‐ eracy of the white race and called for marriage atrists working at the end of the nineteenth centu‐ laws, which were sporadically implemented in ry (notably Alfred Ploetz, an early friend of writer the latter half of the nineteenth-century (e.g. the Gerhart Hauptmann, who shared his eugenicists laws against consanguineal or frst-cousin mar‐ beliefs) and American doctors, and he proposed riage in Ohio and Kansas). Lorenz noted the sur‐ that we view psychiatry’s struggle for indepen‐ prising absence of a sustained discourse on race dence in the broader context of theories about the and racial mixing in the more specialized medical degeneration of the brain that spanned the conti‐ journals; writers in the antebellum area seemed nents. GRAHAM BAKER likewise was interested in more concerned with frst-cousin marriages, idio‐ transatlantic connections, comparing the influ‐ cy, and the “purity” of whites, arguing (as Samuel ence of proto-eugenic thinking on Christian chari‐ Gridley Howe did in 1848) that “nature, outraged ties in England and the United States, specifically in the persons of the parents, exacts her penalty the New York City Mission Society and the London from the parents to the children.” The provocative City Mission. Mining the copious written archives question that ended Lorenz’s talk - why there left by both organizations, Baker revealed how wasn’t, despite universal agreement about the easily orthodox Christian theology and eugenics need to perfect the white race, more widespread co-existed. However, the missionaries’ hope that eugenic legislation in nineteenth-century America spiritual devotion could engender physical - led to a lively debate, during which participants strength on a national level - a Lamarckian con‐ commented mostly on the differences between viction they shared
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