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“ALMOST A SEPARATE RACE”: RACIAL THOUGHT AND THE IDEA OF EUROPE IN BRITISH ENCYCLOPEDIAS AND HISTORIES, 1771–1830

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

PAUL STOCK
PAUL STOCK*
Affiliation:
Department of International History, London School of Economics E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores the association between racial thought and the idea of Europe in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. It begins by noting the complexities surrounding the word “race” in this period, before considering whether—and on what grounds—contemporary race thinkers identify a “European race” or “races”. This reveals important ambiguities and correlations between anatomical, genealogical and cultural understandings of human difference. The essay then discusses how some of these ideas find expression in British encyclopedias, histories and geographical books. In this way, it shows how racial ideas are disseminated, not just in dedicated volumes on anatomy and biological classification, but also in general works which purport to summarize and transmit contemporary received knowledge. The article draws upon entries on “Europe” in every British encyclopedia completed between 1771 and 1830, as well as named source texts for those articles, tracing how the word “Europe” was used and what racial connotations it carried. Some entries imply that “European” is either a separate race entirely, or a subcategory of a single human race. Others, however, reject the idea of a distinctive European people to identify competing racial groups in Europe. These complexities reveal increasing interest in the delineation of European identities, an interest which emerges partly from long-standing eighteenth-century debates about the categorization and comprehension of human difference. In addition, they show the diffusion of (contending) racial ideas in non-specialist media, foreshadowing the growing prominence of racial thought in the later nineteenth century.

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Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , April 2011 , pp. 3 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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23 Augstein, H. F., “From the Land of the Bible to the Caucasus and Beyond: The Shifting Ideas of the Geographical Origins of Humankind”, in Erst, Waltraud and Harris, Bernard, eds., Race, Science and Medicine, 1700–1960 (New York and London, 1999), 64Google Scholar.

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33 Long, Edward, The History of Jamaica, 3 vols. (London, 1774), 2: 356, 374–5, 353Google Scholar. Long's terminology is occasionally indistinct: sometimes he uses “race” in the sense of “classes of human creatures”, which might imply varieties of a single group; at other moments he talks about orang-utans as a “race of beings”, which would suggest a meaning closer to the modern “species”. See ibid., 2: 371, 375–6.

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37 For discussions of empire and race see Wheeler, The Complexion of Race, 10–14; Colwill, “Sex, Savagery and Slavery”, esp. 207; Wilson, The Island Race, esp. 90–91, 151.

38 Kafter, Frank, ed., introduction to Notable Encyclopaedias of the Late Eighteenth Century: Eleven Successors of the Encyclopédie, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 315 (Oxford, 1994), 1–2Google Scholar.

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43 Identifying encyclopedic source material is extremely difficult because articles rarely employ references. I have, however, investigated every occasion when an article on “Europe” mentions a work or an authority by name. These materials often name other influences not acknowledged directly by encyclopedias. The Encyclopaedia Londinesis (1810–24), for example, cites John Pinkerton's Modern Geography (1802), which in turn draws upon the anonymous Complete System of Geography (1747), Fenning and Collyer's New System of Geography (1765–6) and Middleton's New and Complete System of Geography (1777). See Encyclopaedia Londinensis, 24 vols. (London, 1810–24), 7: 83; John Pinkerton, Modern Geography, 2 vols. (London, 1802), 2: 782.

44 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2nd edn, 10 vols. (Edinburgh, 1777–84), 4: 2860. For the importance of aesthetics in Prichard's and Lawrence's racial ideas see Schiebinger, Nature's Body, 133–4.

45 The English Encyclopaedia, 10 vols. (London, 1802), 3: 351.

46 Silvia Sebastiani, “Race as a Construction of the Other: ‘Native Americans’ and ‘Negroes’ in the Eighteenth-Century Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica”, in Bo Stråth, ed., Europe and the Other, Europe as the Other (Brussels, 2000), 224.

47 The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, 18 vols. (Edinburgh and London, 1808–30), 9: 238.

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52 Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn, “genius”, senses 3 and 4.

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54 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 4th edn, 20 vols. (Edinburgh, 1801–9), 8: 350–1.

55 Middleton, Charles, A New and Complete System of Geography, 2 vols. (London, 1777), 1: iiGoogle Scholar. According to Roberto Dainotto, the “Arabist theory” (the idea that “European” civilization originated in Asia) became more prevalent from the 1770s onwards. See Dainotto, Europe (in Theory) (London, 2007), 6, 130–2.

56 Middleton, System of Geography, 2: 3.

57 A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 2 vols. (London, 1806–7), 1: 349.

58 Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 6 vols. (Edinburgh and London, 1824), 4: 181.

59 Ibid., 4: 187.

60 This theory appears in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 4th edn; The Cyclopaedia; or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, 39 vols. (London, 1802–19); Encyclopaedia Londinensis, 24 vols. (London, 1810–24).

61 For details of Pinkerton's life see Couper, Sarah, “Pinkerton, John (pseuds. Robert Heron, H. Bennet) (1758–1826)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar, available at www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22301, accessed 21 February 2009.

62 Pinkerton, Modern Geography, 1: 8. Versions of his argument appear in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 4th edn; Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary; Encyclopaedia Londinensis; and The Oxford Encyclopaedia, 7 vols. (Oxford, 1828–31).

63 Droixhe, La linguistique, 86–88. See also Kidd, British Identities, 9–11.

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70 Johnson, “The Scythian”, 256.

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90 Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, 9: 239.

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92 The English Encyclopaedia, 3: 351; The Modern Encyclopaedia, 5: 77; The London Encyclopaedia, 22 vols. (London, 1826–9), 8: 677.

93 Encyclopaedia Londinensis, 7: 85.

94 Kidd, British Identities, 22–4.

95 Augstein, Prichard's Anthropology, xv.

96 Pinkerton, Dissertation, xxi, 109.

97 Olender, Maurice, The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion and Philology in the Nineteenth-Century, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 5Google Scholar.

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99 Olender, The Languages of Paradise, 15–16, 57–63; idem, “Europe, or How to Escape Babel”, 5–9, 22–4.

100 Thom, Republics, Nations and Tribes, 224–7, 266.