7. The American School and Scientific Racism in Early American Anthropology

Abstract

7. The American School and Scientific Racism in Early American Anthropology Adam Dewbury Nineteenth-century America was a tumultuous place, wracked by war and suffering the growing pains of both westward expansion and industrialization. The intellectual world was equally turbulent, as a great battle of ideas challenged the Jeffersonian ideal of equality. The issues at hand were the very origins of humanity and the unity of humankind, and the social, political, and intellectual climate of nineteenth-century America proved to be fertile ground for the debate. Science captured the interest of a broad cross-section of Americans, including farmers, laborers, and tradespeople as well as educated professionals (Goldstein 1994). The natural sciences were of particular interest, evidenced by the founding of professional scientific organizations such as the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in 1812 and the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. While the natural sciences were maturing, anthropology hardly existed as a professional discipline for most of the nineteenth century, in the United States or elsewhere; even the term "anthropology" saw little use, with "ethnology" being the favored term for most scholars. Early anthropologists were usually scientific professionals in other fields (medicine, zoology, biology) and they drew upon the core concepts, theories, and philosophies of their primary disciplines to craft their visions of anthropology. Three such theorists in the United States were Samuel George Morton, Louis Agassiz, and Josiah Nott: all European-trained physicians with strong professional interests in the natural sciences. These men formed a crucial part of the small group of scientists known as the "American School" (Stanton 1960; Gould 1978, 1996), a group of strong and influential proponents of the theory of polygenism: the idea that human racial variation could be explained as the result of separate creation, rather than genesis from one primordial pair, which led to a belief in the separation of species. The antithesis of polygenism, monogenism, postulated the single origin of humankind and the unity of the human species. Historians of anthropology have often noted the importance of polygenism [End Page 121] in the history of anthropology (e.g., Erickson and Murphy 1998; Barnard 2000); for example, Barnard writes, "Their battles helped to form the discipline, and it would be denial of this fundamental fact if we were to ignore the battle and remember only our victorious intellectual ancestors, the monogenists, in isolation" (2000:25). It is also important to remember the less savory aspects of our early forebears, and this paper focuses on the scientific racism espoused by Morton and especially Agassiz and Nott. The work of the American School lent support to the institution of slavery, and also to the virulent racism of nineteenth-century America, a condition which in no small part persists today. Recent publications such as The Bell Curve(Herrnstein and Murray 1994) and Race: The Reality of Human Differences(Sarich and Miele 2004) rehash many of the American School's basic arguments about biologically determined inferiority. Couched in modern scientific language, these "new" ideas may seem compelling—until one realizes that the same arguments were presented and refuted over a century ago. I show in this paper how the personal prejudices of three influential scientists engendered a particularly racist early American anthropology. Contexts: Social, Political, Intellectual The question of human origins was of tremendous interest in all spheres of American society in the nineteenth century. The future of the nation literally depended upon the question's resolution. With westward expansion came the question of whether slavery would be allowed in the new territories, and a growing movement was pushing hard for the abolition of slavery in all the United States. Each side had a vested interest in proving (or disproving) the shared humanity of blacks and whites. American science was strongly influenced by the European tradition, and it is within this tradition that the conceptual framework supporting polygenism was created. Mayr (1972) identifies two major paradigms, creationism and essentialism, that formed the cornerstones of nineteenth-century natural science theory in Europe and the United States. Disparaged by most modern scientists, creationism was embraced by a majority of scientists in the first half of the nineteenth century (Lovejoy 1959), and was seen as a satisfactory explanation for diversity...