Mapping Moral Geographies: W. Z. Ripley's Races of Europe and the United States

Abstract

Racia and anthropometric cartography produced and reinforced biological, intellectual, and moral hierarchies and was situated within wider scientific racial discourses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The practice of mapping “race” based on the widespread collection of anthropometric measurements occupied both European and New World anthropologists and geographers. My discussion centers on the work of American economist and anthropogeographer, W. Z. Ripley, who in 1899 published a widely acclaimed text on The Races of Europe. This work is contextualized and informed both by Victorian obsessions with categorizing racial hierarchies and by specifically American racial discourses that included concerns over increasing immigration from southern and eastern Europe and the threat immigration posed to the Anglo-Saxon ruling elite. Using the conceptual framework developed by J. B. Harley and other recent contributions to critical cartography, this article focuses on Ripley's use of cartographic images to support his tripartite racial scheme for Europe, and explores his projection of a “moral geography” onto European and, in turn, American landscapes and populations. Central to this analysis are the links between anthropogeography, environmentalism, heredity, and American immigration, all key elements in Ripley's racial science.

Key Words:

• immigration
• moral geographies
• power of maps
• racial and anthropometric cartography
• social construction of race

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor David Livingstone for his input into this research project, and Dr John Robb, two anonymous referees, and the section editor for comments on drafts of this article. Thanks also to the curators in the MIT and Harvard archives for their assistance in gaining access to materials of relevance to this project.

Notes

1. As Livingstone (1992a, 162–66, 221–22) has observed, in the first half of the nineteenth century in Britain several members of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) were also members of the Ethnological Society, and in 1851 geography and ethnology were established as section E in the British Academy for the Advancement of Science (BAAS). Although anthropology and geography later became separated, many links between these areas continued, including the acceptance of environmental determinism and its impact on racial development.

2. For a brief review of recent developments in critical cartography, see Perkins (2004).

3. Sparke (1995, 1998) recognizes the important links between colonialism and cartography, but argues that as well as focusing on the hegemonic construction of imperial space, counter-mappings, or antihegemonic mappings, need also to be considered. These become apparent through rereading the map text. Resistant voices portrayed through cartography include the maps drawn by Shawnadithit, the last of the Beothuk in Newfoundland, Canada (Sparke 1995), and the 1987 trial in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, where representatives of two First Nations (the Wet'su-wet'en and the Gitxsan) brought a land claim against the government (Sparke 1998). Rundstrom (1991) discusses the ways in which the Inuit communities of Arctic Canada have resituated themselves as part of the cartographic establishment through the production of a map in 1987, which recorded 8,000 Inuit names of places that had usually been transmitted through oral memory.

4. Owen Dwyer (2003) has examined the memorialization of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama through a focus on tourism literature and maps, and from the standpoint that maps and monuments are both viewed as mirrors on the world. He argues that these representations show the civil rights movements as a won cause but do not critique further inequalities existing in society.

5. Ward (1971) has observed that the distinction made between old and new immigrants was a loose one, and was not closely tied to time of arrival or to length of residence of individual migrants.

6. Gordon (1964) also identified a third trend of “cultural pluralism” but this only formed a minor departure on discussions of assimilation in this period. This concept was more progressive in outlook, stressing political and economic integration, but allowing for preservation of significant elements of the culture of the immigrant groups.

7. Fears about racial degeneration continued for several decades; in the 1930s President Franklin D. Roosevelt, influenced by eugenicists such as Madison Grant, increasingly voiced fears about race suicide and about the degenerate stocks entering the country during his presidency (Brechin 1996, 233).

8. Topinard was influenced by the polygenist notion of “hereditary racial essence,” where it was assumed that pure races could be distinguished from hybrid races (Stocking 1968)

9. Ripley also regarded stature as heavily influenced by environmental change (again reflecting Darwinian ideas) and argued that inhabitants of mountainous areas, where food was scarce, would be shorter than inhabitants of areas where food was plentiful. These discussions also contained a neo-Lamarckian element, whereby stature could be affected by artificial selection resulting from “modern social life,” where choice of occupation was governed by “hereditary necessity” (Ripley 1899b, 85). Thus a greater stature could be expected from police and ironworkers, as compared to tailors or shoemakers.

10. By defining this group as “Alpine,”Ripley returned to Linnaeus's nomenclature, rejecting the term Celtic, which he felt would falsely suggest links between race and the Celtic language and culture.

11. Statistical societies were formed in London (London Statistical Society) and Manchester and other towns and cities in the United Kingdom during the 1830s and 1840s (Driver 1988). In the United States, the American Statistical Society was formed in 1839 (Hannah 2000).

12. Selected newspaper clippings survive in the Harvard Archives, but more extensive research in this particular area may reveal further newspaper commentary resulting from Ripley's racial theories.

13. Threats to the racial character of the nation were seen as resulting not only from the increase in immigrant numbers but from intermixture with “inferior” races. Ideas of degeneration (Stepan 1985) and miscegenation (Livingstone 1987a, 1992c) prevailed. Ripley himself argued that “crossing between highly evolved varieties or types tended to bring about reversion to the original stock” (Ripley 1908b, 754–55). This again reflected the increasing paranoia among American scientists during the period surrounding issues such as interracial marriage.