Race in British eugenics

European History Quarterly

Volumn 31, Issue 3, 2001, Pages

  Stone, Dan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Class; Genetics; Prejudice; Science

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; ETHICS; ETHNOLOGY; HISTORY; HOMICIDE; MEDICAL GENETICS; PERCEPTION; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL PROBLEM; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; UNITED KINGDOM;

EUGENICS; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HOMICIDE; RACE RELATIONS; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL PERCEPTION; STEREOTYPING;

EID: 0037673042     PISSN: 02656914     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/026569140103100303     Document Type: Article

References (129)

1. Frank Dikötter, 'Race Culture: Recent Perspectives on the History of Eugenics', American Historical Review, Vol. 103, 2 (1998), 467-78
2. Philip J. Pauly, 'The Eugenics Industry: Growth or Restructuring?', Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 26, 1 (1993), 131-45
3. On which the literature is vast. See the standard work by Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (Cambridge 1989)
4. Also: Peter Weingart, Jürgen Kroll and Kurt Bayertz, Rasse, Blut und Gene. Geschichte der Eugenik und Rassenhygiene in Deutschland (Frankfurt 1988)
5. Ute Deichmann and Benno Müller-Hill, 'Biological Research at Universities and Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes in Nazi Germany', in Science, Technology and National Socialism, ed. Monika Renneberg and Mark Walter (Cambridge 1994), 160-83
6. Peter Weingart, 'The Rationalization of Sexual Behaviour: The Institutionalization of Eugenic Thought in Germany', Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 20, 2 (1987), 159-93
7. Sheila Faith Weiss, 'The Race Hygiene Movement in Germany', Osiris, n.s., Vol. 3 (1987), 193-236
8. Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and Others. Germany 1933-1945 (Oxford 1988)
9. idem, 'Human Genetics and the Mass Murder of Jews, Gypsies, and Others', in The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck (Bloomington 1998), 103-14
10. Arnd Krüger, 'A Horse Breeder's Perspective: Scientific Racism in Germany, 1870-1933
11. and Peter Weingart, 'The Thin Line between Eugenics and Preventive Medicine'
12. both in Identity and Intolerance: Nationalism, Racism, and Xenophobia in Germany and United States, ed. Norbert Finzsch and Dietmar Schirmer (Cambridge 1998), 371-95 and 397-412
13. Uli Linke, Blood and Nation: The European Aesthetic of Race (Philadelphia 1999)
14. Donald MacKenzie, 'Eugenics in Britain', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6, 3-4 (1976), 499-532
15. idem, 'Karl Pearson and the Professional Middle Class', Annals of Science, Vol. 36, 2 (1979), 125-43
16. G.R. Searle, Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914 (Leyden 1976)
17. idem, 'Eugenics and Class', in Biology, Medicine and Society 1840-1940, ed. Charles Webster (Cambridge 1981), 217-42
18. Greta Jones, 'Eugenics and Social Policy between the Wars', The Historical Journal, Vol. 25, 3 (1982), 717-28
19. Pauline M.H. Mazumdar, Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings: The Eugenics Society and its Critics in Britain (London 1992)
20. F.C.S. Schiller, Social Decay and Eugenical Reform (London 1932), 104
21. see also Leonard Darwin, 'The Cost of Degeneracy', Eugenics Review, Vol. 5, 2 (1913), 93-100
22. A.F. Tredgold, 'Eugenics and the Future Progress of Man', Eugenics Review, Vol. 3, 2 (1911), 94-117
23. idem, 'The Study of Eugenics', Quarterly Review, Vol. 217, no. 432 (1912), 43-67
24. idem, 'Heredity and Environment in Regard to Social Reform', Quarterly Review, Vol. 219, no. 437 (1913), 364-83
25. J.A. Hobson, 'Race Eugenics as a Policy', in Free Thought in the Social Sciences (London 1926), 220
26. Robert Reid Rentoul, Race Culture; Or, Race Suicide? (A Plea for the Unborn) (London and Felling-on-Tyne 1906), xii, 4-5. Further references in the text
27. See, for example: George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (Madison, WI 1985)
28. Sander Gilman, 'Black Sexuality and Modern Consciousness', in Blacks and German Culture, ed. Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (Madison, WI 1986), 5-53
29. Roger Bartra, Wild Men in the Looking Glass: The Mythic Origins of European Otherness (Ann Arbor 1994)
30. Robert J.C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London 1995)
31. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (London 1995)
32. Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870 (Durham, NC and London 1997)
33. Adam Lively, Masks: Blackness, Race and the Imagination (London 1998)
34. See William B. Provine, 'Geneticists and the Biology of Race Crossing', Science, Vol. 182 (23 November 1973), 790-96
35. and Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Harmondsworth 1986)
36. Advertisement in the English Review, Vol. 45, 6 (1937), between 708 and 709
37. Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, The Survival of the Unfittest (London 1927), 9, 158
38. Dan Stone, 'The Extremes of Englishness: The "Exceptional" Ideology of Anthony Mario Ludovici', Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol. 4, 2 (1999), 191-218
39. Anthony M. Ludovici, The False Assumptions of 'Democracy' (London 1921), 114
40. Anthony M. Ludovici, Lysistrata, or Woman's Future and Future Woman (London 1925), 115
41. Anthony M. Ludovici, Man: An Indictment (London 1927), 306
42. Anthony Ludovici, Violence, Sacrifice and War (London 1933), 11-12
43. Ludovici to Blacker, 12 July 1928. Eugenics Society Archive, PP/CPB/A4/1 (Blacker General), Contemporary Medical Archives Centre, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 183 Euston oad, London NW1 2BP. Material from the Eugenics Society Archive is cited by courtesy of the Wellcome Trustees and the Galton Institute. This letter was a response to Slacker's review in the Eugenics Review of Ludovici's The Night Hoers (1927) which suggested that Ludovici's suggestions for culling the unfit would be rendered unnecessary by advances in prenatal selection
44. Eugenics Society to Ludovici, 8 November 1927. Eugenics Society Archive, SA/EUG/C.212 (Eugenics Society: People. A.M. Ludovici 1927-1947)
45. Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933-39 (Oxford 1983), 317-18
46. idem, Patriotism Perverted: Captain Ramsay, The Right Club and British Anti-Semitism 1939-40 (London 1998), 52-3
47. Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: From Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts to the National Front (2nd edn, London 1998), 141
48. C.P. Blacker, Eugenics in Prospect and Retrospect: The Galton Lecture 1945 (London 1945), 5, 8, 9
49. idem, Eugenics: Galton and After (London 1952), 139, 291
50. Havelock Ellis, The Task of Social Hygiene (London 1912), 20
51. idem, The Problem of Race-Regeneration (London 1911), 69 on the feeble-minded
52. This is the argument of Mazumdar, op. cit
53. Dorothy Porter, '"Enemies of the Race": Biologism, Environmentalism, and Public Health in Edwardian England', Victorian Studies, Vol. 34,2(1991), 164
54. See, for example, Eden Paul, Socialism and Eugenics (Manchester 1911), originally a lecture given to the Poole and Branksome ILP, 25 June 1911
55. H.C. Bibby, Heredity, Eugenics and Social Progress (London 1939)
56. see also Michael Freeden, 'Eugenics and Progressive Thought: A Study in Ideological Affinity', The Historical Journal, Vol. 22, 3 (1979), 645-71
57. Diane Paul, 'Eugenics and the Left', Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 45, 4 (1984), 567-90
58. William H. Schneider, Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France (Cambridge 1990)
59. On 'race' and 'nation' as synonyms, see Jose Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit: A Social History of Britain 1870-1914 (Oxford 1993), 233-7. For correctives
60. see Wolfgang Mock, 'The Function of "Race" in Imperialist Ideologies: The Example of Joseph Chamberlain', in Nationalist and Racialist Movements in Britain and Germany before 1914, ed. Paul Kennedy and Anthony Nicholls (London 1981), 190-203
61. J.W. Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914 (New Haven 2000), 102
62. W.C.D. and CD. Whetham, 'The Extinction of the Upper Classes', The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 66 (July 1909), 97-108
63. idem, 'Eminence and Heredity', The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 69 (May 1911), 818-32
64. the citations come from W.C.D. Whetham, 'Inheritance and Sociology", The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 65 (January 1909), 81
65. and idem, An Introduction to Eugenics (Cambridge 1912), 41
66. see also idem, The Family and the Nation: A Study in Natural Inheritance and Social Responsibility (London 1909)
67. idem, 'Decadence and Civilization', The Hibbert Journal, Vol. 10, 1 (1911), 179-200
68. idem, Heredity and Society (London 1912)
69. C.T. Ewart, 'Eugenics and Degeneracy', The Journal of Mental Science, Vol. 56,235 (1910), 672-3
70. James Marchant, Birth-Rate and Empire (London 1917), 103, 102, 162
71. W.H. Mallock, Aristocracy and Evolution: A Study of the Rights, the Origin, and the Social Functions of the Wealthier Classes (London 1898)
72. Anon. [Arthur Bountwood], National Revival: A Re-Statement of Tory Principles (2nd edn, London 1913)
73. J.M. Kennedy, Tory Democracy (London 1911)
74. Anthony M. Ludovici, A Defence of Aristocracy: A Textbook for Tories (London 1915)
75. idem, A Defence of Conservatism: A Further Textbook for Tories (London 1927)
76. Viscount Lymington, Ich Dien: The Tory Path (London 1931)
77. Philippe Mairet, Aristocracy and the Meaning of Class Rule: An Essay upon Aristocracy Past and Future (London 1931)
78. Lord Selborne, obituary of Willoughby de Broke, sent to Lady Willoughby de Broke, May 1924. Bodleian Library, Selborne MS 94/157-60
79. Among Willoughby de Broke's articles in the National Review, see especially 'The Tory Tradition', Vol. 58, 344 (October 1911), 201-13
80. and 'National Toryism', Vol. 59, 351 (May 1912), 413-27. Letter from Willoughby de Broke to Andrew Bonar Law, 5 May 1912, House of Lords Record Office (HLRO), Hist. Coll., Bonar Law Papers, BL 26/3/11
81. Willoughby de Broke, 'Introduction' to C.W. Saleeby, The Whole Armour of Man: Preventive Essays for Victory in the Great Campaigns of Peace to Come (London 1919), 7-9
82. see also Willoughby de Broke's letters to Saleeby, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Records Office, Stratford-upon-Avon, DR 145, in one of which (DR 145/2), he says to Saleeby that in his book Heredity and Race Culture, 'you revealed yourself to me as a prophet'
83. Karl Pearson, The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton. Volume IIIA: Correlation, Personal Identification and Eugenics (Cambridge 1930), 353
84. Dan Stone 'White Men with Low Moral Standards? German Anthropology and the Herero Genocide', Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 35, 2 (2001), 33-45
85. Karl Pearson, National Life from the Standpoint of Science (2nd edn, London 1905), x, 21, 23-4
86. Karl Pearson, The Groundwork of Eugenics (London 1909), 20
87. Karl Pearson, 'Some Recent Misinterpretations of the Problem of Nurture and Nature', in The Relative Strength of Nurture and Nature, ed. Ethel M. Elderton (London 1915), 58-9
88. Francis Galton, Essays in Eugenics, cited in Searle, Eugenics and Politics, 35
89. On women in the eugenics movement, see Rosaleen Love, '"Alice in Eugenics-Land": Feminism and Eugenics in the Scientific Careers of Alice Lee and Ethel Elderton', Annals of Science, Vol. 36, 2 (1979), 145-58
90. Karl Pearson and Margaret Moul, 'The Problem of Alien Immigration into Great Britain, Illustrated by an Examination of Russian and Polish Jewish Children', Annals of Eugenics: A Journal for the Scientific Study of Racial Problems, Vol. 1, 1 and 2 (1925), 7, 126, 127, and passim
91. R.F. Horton, National Ideals and Race-Regeneration (London 1912), 18-19. Further references in the text
92. Arnold White, Efficiency and Empire (London 1901)
93. idem, 'Eugenics and National Efficiency', Eugenics Review, Vol. 1, 2 (1909), 105-11
94. idem, The Views of 'Vanoc': An Englishman's Outlook (London 1910), 275-306
95. Arnold White, The English Democracy: Its Promises and Perils (London 1894), 150-70
96. idem, The Modern Jew (London 1899), in which he set out to show that England was 'dominated by cosmopolitan and materialist influences fatal to the existence of the English nation' (xi-xii). In Efficiency and Empire he wrote (80) that 'Rule by foreign Jews is being set up.'
97. Leonard Darwin, The Need for Eugenic Reform (London 1926), 495-6
98. Leonard Darwin, What is Eugenics? (London 1928), 75-6, 77-8
99. C.W. Saleeby, 'The Progress of Eugenics', The New Age, Vol. 7, 1 (1910), supplement, 4. In a letter to Galton on 7 February 1909 Pearson made his antipathy quite plain: 'If our youthful efforts were mixed up in any way with the work of Havelock Ellis, Slaughter or Saleeby, we should kill all chance of founding Eugenics as an academic discipline
100. See Pearson, Life, Letters, 372. Cf. letters of 10 February 1909 (372) and 6 April 1909 (379)
101. C.W. Saleeby, The Methods of Race-Regeneration (London 1911), 8
102. C.W. Saleeby, Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles (London 1912), 58, 167
103. Cf. Caleb Williams Saleeby, The Progress of Eugenics (London 1914), 155, 182
104. C.W. Saleeby, Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics (London 1909), xi
105. Saleeby, The Whole Armour of Man (note 35), 39
106. F.C.S. Schiller, Tantalus, or The Future of Man (London 1924), 42, 52
107. Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller, Eugenics and Politics (London 1926), 15. Further references in the text
108. Schiller, Social Decay and Eugenical Reform, 110
109. Gotto in 'Eugenics and Imperial Development', Eugenics Review, Vol. 11, 3 (1919), 135. The discussion was held at Bedford College on 8 July 1919
110. Eugenics Society Archive SA/EUG/D.179 (Eugenics Society 'General', Race Crossing Investigation 1924-1927), especially Secretary [Cora Hodson] to Lady Barr, 27 November 1924, and Bates to Hodson, 8 October 1927
111. Eugenics Society Archive, SA/EUG/D.103 (Immigration and Emigration c.1925-1958). A good critique of this paper was made by anthropologist Kenneth Little in The Times, 13 October 1958
112. See Eugenics Society Archive, SA/EUG/D.104 (Immigrants, research into, 1954-1966)
113. See for example, G.P. Balzarotti and C.S. Stock, 'Niceforo on the Highly Superior German', Eugenics Review, Vol. 10, 1 (1918), 30-41
114. H.J. Fleure, 'The Nordic Myth: A Critique of Current Racial Theories', Eugenics Review, Vol. 22, 2 (1930), 117-21
115. C.P. Blacker, 'Eugenics in Germany', Eugenics Review, Vol. 25, 3 (1933), 157-9
116. Felix Tietze, 'Eugenic Measures in the Third Reich', Eugenics Review, Vol. 31, 2 (1939), 105-7. The Eugenics Review still permitted a high-ranking German public health officer to state the case for German sterilization measures during the war
117. F.J. Wittelshoefer, 'German Eugenic Legislation in Peace and War, Eugenics Review, Vol. 34, 3 (1942), 91-2
118. The most important anti-racist statements by scientists were Julian Huxley, A.C. Haddon, and A.M. Carr-Saunders, We Europeans: A Survey of 'Racial' Problems (Harmondsworth 1939 [orig. 1935])
119. and J.B.S. Haldane, Heredity and Politics (London 1938)
120. Lancelot Hogben, Dangerous Thoughts (London 1940)
121. cited in Richard A. Soloway, Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain (Chapel Hill 1995), 197
122. See Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars (Cambridge 1992), 229-35
123. As Hamish G. Spencer and Diane B. Paul have shown in 'The Failure of a Scientific Critique: David Heron, Karl Pearson and Mendelian Eugenics', British Journal of the History of Science, Vol. 31, 4 (1998), 441-52. On the biometrics/eugenics debate
124. see now M. Eileen Magnello, 'The Non-Correlation of Biometrics and Eugenics: Rival Forms of Laboratory Work in Karl Pearson's Career at University College London', History of Science, Vol. 37, 2 (1999), 123-50
125. Diane B. Paul and Hamish G. Spencer, 'The Hidden Science of Eugenics', Nature, Vol. 374, no. 6520 (23 March 1995), 302
126. For an exception see 'Lens' (C.W. Saleeby, pseud'.), 'Imperial Eugenics, Part IV: Preventive Eugenics', New Statesman, Vol. 6, 150 (19 February 1916), 466: 'The idea that we shall purify the race from its morbid elements even by the most rigorous and absolute segregation or sterilization of unsatisfactory individuals, though practised upon a scale undreamt f by anyone, is seen to be mythical. All the time new degeneracy is being originated in and through the healthy persons whom the purely Darwinian-Galtonian idea of selection assumes to be beyond need of any protection.' Perhaps it was his enmity towards the biometricians which helped Saleeby see what Pearson did not, though it was staring him in the face
127. R. Austin Freeman, Social Decay and Regeneration (London 1921), 260 (on Labour), 318. Further references in the text. That Freeman was not a scientist did not prevent his views being taken seriously, at least by the Eugenics Society. Sections of his book were adapted for publication in the Eugenics Review
128. See R. Austin Freeman, 'The Sub-Man', Eugenics Review, Vol. 15, 2 (1923), 383-92 (in which the 'sub-man' is compared with 'the aboriginal negro' [388-9])
129. and 'Segregation of the Fit: A Plea for Positive Eugenics', Eugenics Review, Vol. 23, 3 (1931), 207-13 (in which [212] Freeman softened the racism of his 1921 book, now saying that the prime qualification of 'fitness' was intelligence)