Abstract
The terms “racism” and “racist” have become highly emotive since the 1930’s, when a special variety of racism was taken up and carried to power in Germany by the National Socialist Party. The atrocities committed during the 1940’s in the name of pseudo-scientific racism give special overtones to any discussion of the history of Western thought about race differences. Race prejudice, racial consciousness, and racism can mean many things. At one level, there is the simple and unavoidable fact that major racial differences are recognizable. In every racially mixed society, in every contact between people who differ in physical appearance, there has always been instant recognition of race: it was the first determinant of inter-group social relations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Footnotes
R. Redfield, The Little Community and Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago, 1960).
See J. H. Parry, The Spanish Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1940);
S. A. Zavala, New Viewpoints on the Spanish Colonization of America (Philadelphia, 1943);
L. U. Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Washington, 1949).
The most accessible sample of mid-eighteenth century attitudes is T. Astley (Publisher), A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels, 4 vols. (London, 1745– 1747).
For representative later works see: William Snelgrave, A New Account of Guinea and the Slave Trade (London, 1754);
Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1794);
John Matthews, Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone … (London, 1788), esp. pp. 91–94.
See also B. Davidson, Black Mother (London, 1961), pp. 101–2.
J. J. Hecht, Continental and Colonial Servants in Eighteenth Century England (Northampton, Mass., 1954), PP. 33–36, 45–47.
R. Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahadee, King of Dahomey (London, 1789).
Matthews, Voyage to Sierra-Leone, pp. 158–59; Edward Long, History of Jamaica, 3 vols. (London, 1774), II, 373–74.
T. Bendyshe, “The History of Anthropology,” Memoirs Read Before the Anthropological Society of London, I, 335 (1863–1864).
Charles White, An Account of the Regular Graduations in Man … (London, 1799), P. 1.
See also A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936).
A. C. Haddon, History of Anthropology, 2nd ed. (London, 1934), p. 71.
J. F. Blumenbach, “On the Natural Variety of Mankind” (1775 and 1795), p. 264;
John Hunter, “An Inaugural Disputation on the Varieties of Man” (1775), pp. 366–67. Both translated in T. Bendyshe (Ed.), The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (London, 1865). This John Hunter, a physician (d. 1809) should not be confused with his more famous namesake, the anatomist (1723–1793). See DNB biographies. It is an interesting commentary on the staying power of these first formulations that Blumenbach’s terminology and the substance of his classification was still in use by the United States Immigration Service in 1961.
Haddon, History of Anthropology, p. 16: W. E. Miihlmann, Geschichte der Anthropologie (Bonn, 1948), p. 60.
P. L. Moreau de Maupertuis, “Venus Physique” (1745), II, pp. 106–10, 129– 30, in Oeuvres de Maupertuis, 4 vols. (Lyon, 1756).
Blumenbach, “Varieties of Mankind,” pp. 209–13; Hunter, “Inaugural Disputation.” See also J. C. Greene, “Some Early Speculations on the Origin of Human Races,” American Anthropologist, LVI, 33 (February 1954).
E. W. Count, “The Evolution of the Race Idea in Modern Western Culture during the Period of the Pre-Darwinian Nineteenth Century,” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, VIII (2nd series), 143–45 (February, 1946); A. O. Lovejoy, “Kant and Evolution,” in B. Glass and others, Forerunners of Darwin, 1745–1859 (Baltimore, 1959), pp. 186–87.
Bendyshe, “History of Anthropology,” pp. 345–49; Count, “The Race Idea,” p. 158; John Atkins, Navy Surgeon … (London, 1734), pp. 23–24.
David Hume, “Of National Character,” The Philosophical Works of David Hume, 4 vols. (London, 1898), III, 252. The essay was first published in 1742, but the passage quoted was added as a footnote in the edition of 1753–54.
See also M. Cook, “Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Negro,” Journal of Negro History, XXI, 294–303 (July, 1936).
Lovejoy, Great Chain of Being, pp. 233 ff.; A. O. Lovejoy, “Some Eighteenth Century Evolutionists,” Popular Science Monthly, LXV, 327 (1904).
A. O. Lovejoy, “Monboddo and Rousseau,” Modern Philology, XXX, 275–96 (February, 1933);
James Burnet, Lord Monboddo, The Origin and Progress of Language, 8 vols. (Edinburgh, 1773–1792), I, 279–90;
Henry Home, Lord Karnes, Sketches of the History of Man, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Edinburgh, 1788), I, 11–13, 36–40.
J. C. Greene, “The American Debate on the Negro’s Place in Nature, 1780– 1815,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XV, 387 (June, 1954).
S. T. von Soemmering, Über die Köperlich Verschiedenbeit des Negers vom Europäer (Frankfurt am Main, 1785).
A Smith, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” Essays (London, 1869), p. 175. First published 1757.
J. F. Blumenbach, “Observations on the Bodily Conformation and Mental Capacity of the Negroes,” Philosophical Magazine, III, 141–47 (1799).
J. L. Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley, 1956), pp. 64–65.
For the theme of the noble savage, the best general treatment is H. N. Fairchild, The Noble Savage (New York, 1928), on which much of the following account is based.
A. O. Lovejoy, “The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality,” Modem Philology, XXI, 165–86 (November, 1923); Cook, “Rousseau and the Negro.”
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man (1732), Epistle I, lines 95–104.
For a discussion of this literature see Wylie Sypher, Guinea’s Captive Kings (Chapel Hill, 1942)
and E. B. Dykes, The Negro in English Romantic Thought (Washington, 1942).
Thomas Day and John Bicknell, The Dying Negro (London, 1775), pp. 7–8. First published 1773.
Thomas Clarkson, History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament, 2 vols. (London, 1808), I, 7.
For the varying points of view on the anti-slave-trade movement, see, in addition to Clarkson: R. Coupland, The British Anti-Slavery Movement (London, 1933);
R. Coupland, Wilberforce: A Narrative (Oxford, 1923);
F. J. Klingberg, The Anti-Slavery Movement in England (New Haven, 1926);
G. R. Mellor, British Imperial Trusteeship 1783–1850 (London, 1951);
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944).
Granville Sharp, A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery in England (London, 1769).
G. Sharp to J. Bryant, 19 October 1772, quoted in Sharp, The Just Limitation of Slavery in the Laws of God … (London, 1776), pp. 44–46.
John Wesley, “Thoughts upon Slavery” in Works (London, 1872), XI, 65. First published 1774;
M. T. Hodgen, “The Negro in the Anthropology of John Wesley,” Journal of Negro History, XIX, 308–23 (July, 1934).
Prince Hoare, Memoirs of Granville Sharp, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1828), I, 221–22, 224–26;
Sharp, A General Plan for Laying out Towns and Townships, of the New Acquired Lands, 2nd ed. (London, 1804), pp. 21–23. First published 1794.
William Wilberforce, Commons, 12 May 1789, Parliamentary Register, XXVI, 147; 18 April 1791, Parliamentary Register, XXIX, 184, 196–97;
Edmund Burke, Commons, 21 May 1789, Parliamentary Register, XXVI, 201; Coupland, Wilberforce, pp. 170, 292–93.
G. Sharp, Just Limitation of Slavery; Sharp, The Law of Liberty … (London, 1776);
Sharp, The Law of “Passive Obedience … (London, 1776); Hoare, Granville Sharp, II, xiii–xvi.
James Ramsay, Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies (London, 1784), PP. 179–263.
Copyright information
© 1964 Regents of the University of Wisconsin
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Curtin, P.D. (1964). The Africans’ “Place in Nature”. In: The Image of Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00539-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00539-0_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-00541-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-00539-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)