Until Darwin, Science, Human Variety and the Origins of Race

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B Ricardo Brown

Until the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the prevailing theory on ‘the species question’ was that humans were made up of five separate species, created at different times and in different places. This view – known as the ‘polygenic theory’ – was particularly favoured by naturalists of the early nineteenth-century 'American School' as it provided a scientific justification for slavery. Darwin’s Origin demolished this view.

This work fills a gap in recent studies on the history of race and science. Focusing on both the classification systems of human variety and the development of science as the arbiter of truth, Brown looks at the rise of the emerging sciences of life and society – biology and sociology – as well as the debate surrounding slavery and abolition.

Sample pages

• Until Darwin: Introduction
• Until Darwin: Index

Readership

History of Science, Darwinism, Cultural Studies and History of Slavery

Contents

Introduction: Ecce Homo or Slavery and Human Varietry
1 Classification and the Species Question
2 Polygenesis and the Types of Mankind
3 Darwin in Context: Science Against Slavery
Conclusion: The Authority of the Sciences of Life

Related titles

• The Aliveness of Plants: The Darwins at the Dawn of Plant Science
• Literature and Science, 1660–1834
• Sex, Reproduction and Darwinism
• Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period
• Styles of Reasoning in the British Life Sciences: Shared Assumptions, 1820–58
• The Works of Charles Darwin
• Victorian Science and Literature

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