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ABSTRACT
By the end of the nineteenth century an earlier ethnological tradition, based mainly on the description of ‘exotic peoples’, had given way to a more scientistic, biologically determinist anthropology. The latter sought, through physical measurements, to explain the racial origins of humankind, taking it for granted that races existed and explaining scientifically how the world's peoples could be categorized on racial grounds. In this scheme the Jews presented a special problem, for most anthropologists assumed them to be racially pure and yet they looked like the majority populations wherever they lived. Thus, despite their small numbers, and despite the fact that anthropologists devoted more time to colonial subjects, almost all race scientists had something to say about the racial origins of the Jews and about how this question spoke to broader anthropological concerns. Stone examines how, at the moment when the discipline of anthropology became institutionalized, it dealt with the Jews in its racial schemas. Although many of the thinkers examined here were soon to be eclipsed, the article presents a snapshot of racial thinking at a crucial juncture in the development of anthropological thought.
Notes
1Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. 2: Religion in Primitive Culture [1871] (New York: Harper & Brothers 1958), 538.
2Douglas Lorimer, ‘Science and the secularization of Victorian images of race’, in Bernard Lightman (ed.), Victorian Science in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1997), 218.
6Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (London: Macmillan 1982), 84.
3George W. Stocking, Jr, ‘What's in a name? The origins of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1837–71)’, Man, NS vol. 6, no. 3, 1971, 385.
4George W. Stocking, Jr, Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1982), 55.
5Douglas Lorimer, ‘Theoretical racism in late-Victorian anthropology, 1870–1900’, Victorian Studies, vol. 31, no. 3, 1988, 421. Lorimer correctly notes that the revival of racism owed as much, if not more, to popular views of race as it did to Robert Knox's anatomy and belief in polygenesis. Nevertheless, these popular views, some of which are discussed here and to which many scientists contributed, were compatible with the polygenetic tradition.
7There were exceptions, several of whom have recently been rediscovered as part of a more palatable anthropological tradition. At the time, however, they were thoroughly marginalized. See especially the remarkable book by the Haitian Anténor Firmin, De l’égalité des races humaines (1885), pub. in English as The Equality of the Human Races, trans. from the French by Asselin Charles (Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2002).
8Henrika Kuklick, ‘Tribal exemplars: images of political authority in British anthropology, 1885–1945’, in George W. Stocking, Jr (ed.), Functionalism Historicized: Essays on British Social Anthropology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1984), 65.
9For example, see Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy (London: Chapman and Hall 1920); Lothrop Stoddard, The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-Man (London: Chapman and Hall 1922); J. W. Gregory, The Menace of Colour: A Study of the Difficulties due to the Association of White and Coloured Races, with an Account of Measures Proposed for Their Solution, and Special Reference to White Civilization in the Tropics (London: Seeley Service & Co. 1925). On acclimatization, see Warwick Anderson, ‘Climates of opinion: acclimatization in nineteenth-century France and England’, Victorian Studies, vol. 35, no. 2, 1992, 135–57.
10John M. Efron claims that the anthropology of the Jews was a marginal concern to British race scientists. Yet, while I do not wish to overstate the Jews’ significance to British anthropology, his chapter devoted to the subject suggests that they were other than marginal, and his survey could be broadened. See John M. Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1994), 33–57.
11For studies devoted solely to the Jews, see, for example, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Israel among the Nations: A Study of the Jews and Antisemitism (London: William Heinemann 1895); Joseph Jacobs, Studies in Jewish Statistics, Social, Vital and Anthropometric (London: D. Nutt 1891); Arthur Ruppin, The Jews of To-Day [1904] (London: G. Bell and Sons 1913); Maurice Fishberg, The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment (London: Walter Scott Publishing Co. 1911); and Karl Kautsky, Are the Jews a Race? (London: Jonathan Cape 1926). For a discussion, see Efron, Defenders of the Race; Mitchell B. Hart, Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2000), ch. 6; Mitchell B. Hart, The Healthy Jew: The Symbiosis of Judaism and Modern Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007); and Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2006).
12I do not focus on Germany here because the place of the Jews in German anthropology has been well explored. See, as a starting point, Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism 1870–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989).
13As well as the works by Stocking already referred to, see George W. Stocking, Jr, Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press 1987); George W. Stocking, Jr, ‘The turn of the century concept of race’, Modernism/Modernity, vol. 1, no. 1, 1994, 4–16; Douglas Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians (Leicester: Leicester University Press 1978); Ronald Rainger, ‘Race, politics, and science: the Anthropological Society of London in the 1860s’, Victorian Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 1978, 51–70; Herbert H. Odom, ‘Generalizations on race in nineteenth century physical anthropology’, Isis, vol. 58, no. 1, 1967, 5–18; Christine Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1981); Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science; John S. Haller, Jr, Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859–1900, 2nd edn (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press 1995); Elizabeth A. Williams, ‘Anthropological institutions in nineteenth-century France’, Isis, vol. 76, no. 3, 1985, 331–48; and Martin Staum, ‘Nature and nurture in French ethnography and anthropology, 1859–1914’, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 65, no. 3, 2004, 475–95.
14Edward B. Tylor, Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization (London: Macmillan and Co. 1881), 56, 60, 79.
15Edward B. Tylor, Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization (London: Macmillan and Co. 1881), 159.
16Paul Topinard, Anthropology, trans. from the French by Robert T. H. Bartley (London: Chapman and Hall 1894), 2, 413, 510–11.
17Daniel G. Brinton, Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography (New York: N. D. C. Hodges 1890), 103, 287.
18Ibid., 139, 138. On Jews being ‘black’, see Sander Gilman, The Jew's Body (New York: Routledge 1991); Reinhold Grimm, ‘Germans, Blacks, and Jews, or is there a German blackness of its own?’, in Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (eds), Blacks and German Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1986), 150–84; and Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness. And on Brinton, see Lee D. Baker, ‘Daniel G. Brinton's success on the road to obscurity’, Cultural Anthropology, vol. 15, no. 3, 2000, 394–423.
20Ibid., 23, 29. For the argument that the Jews are a pure race, see Joseph Jacobs, ‘On the racial characteristics of modern Jews’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 15, 1886, 23–62; Joseph Jacobs and Isidore Spielman, ‘On the comparative anthropometry of English Jews’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 19, 1890, 75–88; and Joseph Jacobs, ‘Anthropology’, in The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls Company 1901), 619–21. On Jacobs, see Efron, Defenders of the Race, ch. 4.
19A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (London: Bliss, Sands and Co. 1898), xxvi.
21A. C. Haddon, The Races of Man and Their Distribution (Halifax: Milner & Company [1912]), 6.
24A. H. Keane, Man Past and Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1899), 498.
26Ibid., 331. Most of this material was taken from Keane, Man Past and Present, 498–9.
22George W. Stocking, Jr, After Tylor: British Social Anthropology 1888–1951 (London: Athlone Press 1996), 182. Keane's Ethnology was ‘neo-polygenist’ since, although he argued that there was only one human species (5), he devoted considerable space to elucidating the evolution of separate races within this species. A. H. Keane, Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1895).
23See Lorimer, ‘Theoretical racism in late-Victorian anthropology’, 414ff.
25A. H. Keane, The World's Peoples: A Popular Account of Their Bodily and Mental Characters, Beliefs, Traditions, Political and Social Institutions (London: Hutchinson & Co. 1908), 5.
28Joseph Deniker, The Races of Man: An Outline of Anthropology and Ethnography (London: Walter Scott 1900), 424.
27Joseph Deniker, The Races of Man: An Outline of Anthropology and Ethnography (London: Walter Scott 1900), 281.
31Ripley, ‘The racial geography of Europe’, 166.
29William Z. Ripley, ‘The racial geography of Europe: a sociological study’, Appleton's Popular Science Monthly, vol. 54, no. 2, 1898, 164–5.
30The cephalic index was calculated by dividing the lengthwise diameter of the skull into the crosswise diameter and multiplying the result by 100. It was introduced to science by the Swede Anders Retzius (1796–1860) in 1840 and was popularized by Paul Broca (1824–1880) and others.
32William Z. Ripley, ‘The racial geography of Europe: a sociological study’, Appleton's Popular Science Monthly, vol. 54, no. 3, 1899, 340, 342–3, 349, 350, 351.
36Ripley, The Races of Europe, 400. On Ripley, see also Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press 1996), 329–30.
33William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (London and New York: D. Appleton & Company 1899), 33.
34Ibid., 390. See Leroy-Beaulieu, Israel among the Nations; Ernest Renan, Le Judaisme comme race et comme religion (Paris: C. Lévy 1883); Cesare Lombroso, Der Antisemitismus und die Juden im Lichte der modernen Wissenschaft (Leipzig: G. H. Wigand 1894).
35Ripley, The Races of Europe, 388, 393. For the fullest use of the cephalic index to discredit the claim of the Jews’ racial purity, see Maurice Fishberg, ‘Craniometry’, in The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company 1903), 333–6; Maurice Fishberg, ‘Materials for the physical anthropology of the Eastern European Jews’, Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, vol. 1, no. 1, 1905, 1–146.
37On Salaman, see Dan Stone, ‘Of peas, potatoes and Jews: Redcliffe N. Salaman and the British debate over Jewish racial origins’, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, vol. 3, 2004, 221–40, and Todd Endelman, ‘Anglo-Jewish scientists and the science of race’, Jewish Social Studies, NS vol. 11, no. 1, 2004, 52–92.
38Robert Brown, The Races of Mankind: Being a Popular Description of the Characteristics, Manners and Customs of the Principal Varieties of the Human Family, 4 vols (London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin 1873–6), iii.199. On the theme of ‘disappearing races’, see Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2003); Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880–1939 (Carlton South, Victoria: Melbourne University Press 1997); Tony Barta, ‘Mr Darwin's shooters: on natural selection and the naturalizing of genocide’, in A. Dirk Moses and Dan Stone (eds), Colonialism and Genocide (London: Routledge 2007), 20–41; and Dan Stone, ‘Biopower and modern genocide’, in A. Dirk Moses (ed.), Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation and Subaltern Resistance in World History (Oxford: Berghahn Books 2008).
39Brown, The Races of Mankind, ii.162.
40Brown, The Races of Mankind, ii.162.
41Brown, The Races of Mankind, ii.163.
43 The Living Races of Mankind: A Popular Illustrated Account of the Customs, Habits, Pursuits, Feasts and Ceremonies of the Races of Mankind throughout the World by Eminent Specialists (London: Hutchinson & Co. [1905]), 341–2.
42For others, not discussed here, see Robert Brown, The Peoples of the World, 6 vols (London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. 1881–6), which repeated verbatim (ii.158–9) the passage on the Jews from The Races of Mankind; Robert Brown, The Countries of the World: Being a Popular Description of the Various Continents, Islands, Rivers, Seas, and Peoples of the Globe, 6 vols (London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. 1884–9); John G. Wood, The Natural History of Man: An Account of the Manner and Customs of the Uncivilized Races of Men, 2 vols (London: George Routledge and Sons 1868–70), all of which were originally published in serial form. For a discussion of Wood and Brown, as well as other popularizers of science such as Edward Clodd and A. H. Keane, see Lorimer, ‘Science and the secularization of Victorian images of race’.
44Douglas A. Lorimer, ‘Race, science and culture: historical continuities and discontinuities, 1850–1914’, in Shearer West (ed.), The Victorians and Race (Aldershot, Hampshire: Scolar Press 1996), 16.
45For example, Cecil F. Beadles, ‘The insane Jew’, Journal of Mental Science, vol. 46, 1900, 733, argued: ‘The mental strain resulting from excessive zeal in acquiring riches, and the worry and annoyance which must invariably accompany this greed for worldly goods, doubtless play no small part in the mental breakdown of these people.’
46Cf. Jacques Barzun, Race: A Study in Superstition [1937] (New York: Harper & Row 1965), 126. It is important to note that anthropological syntheses and textbooks continued to offer such sweeping generalizations about the Jews during the inter-war period. For examples, see H. J. Fleure, The People of Europe (London: Oxford University Press/Humphrey Milford 1922), 64–5; Robert Bennett Bean, The Races of Man: Differentiation and Dispersal of Man (New York: The University Society 1935), 39, 74, 107; and Raymond Firth, Human Types (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons 1938), 18–21 (which dismisses claims for Jewish racial purity, as any other, as ‘political propaganda’). Only by 1940 had Fleure changed his argument so that he could now say: ‘Without denying that there are physical characteristics which occur frequently among Jews, it is obvious that only distorted prejudice can attempt to single out a so-called Jewish race.’ H. J. Fleure, Race and Its Meaning in Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1940), 16. On Fleure, see Tony Kushner, ‘H. J. Fleure: a paradigm for inter-war race thinking in Britain’, published elsewhere in this special issue.
47See Gavin Schaffer, ‘“Like a baby with a box of matches”: British scientists and the concept of “race” in the interwar period’, British Journal of the History of Science, vol. 38, no. 3, 2005, 307–24.