Abstract
In his essay ‘The Present Phasis of Ethnology’, which forms the concluding chapter to the second edition of The Races of Men: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Influence of Race over the Destinies of Nations (1892), Robert Knox tells his readers, ‘I had but to look at the map of the world at any time in the stream of history to perceive that in all great questions of civilization, religion, national power, or greatness, the element which chiefly influenced these was in reality the element of race.’1 Race, Knox avers, is everything, and its integrity can only be safeguarded by practices of endogamy (i.e. marriage within the group) and by the avoidance of hybridity (i.e. intermarriage with members of other groups). History, according to this theory, unfolds as a race war — a war based not primarily on real battles, but on the politics of sex. For it is through sex, through procreation, that the continuity of races is or is not maintained, and it is through sex that empires rise or fall, survive or disappear.KeywordsNineteenth CenturyFemale Genital MutilationModern HistorySettler ColoniPrivy CouncilThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Published Version
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