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

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B Ricardo Brown

Until the publication of 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.

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 in the Natural History – Physiology, Language, Civilization, and the Species of Man; Blumenbach and Cuvier: Classification, Catastrophe and Extinction; Monogenesis and the Fixity of Species; The Negro and the Ibis
2 Polygenesis: Science and Slavery – The American School; The Types of Mankind
3 Darwin in Context: Science Against Slavery – Science against Slavery; Instinct and Slavery; The Descent of Man and the End of the Polygenic Discourse
Concluding Remarks on the Authority of the Sciences of Life and the Genealogy of Race

Related titles

• The Aliveness of Plants: The Darwins at the Dawn of Plant Science
• Literature and Science, 1660–1834
• 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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