The Clash of Culture and the Contact of Races: an Anthropological and Psychological study of the Laws of Racial Adaptability, with special reference to the Depopulation of the Pacific and the Government of Subject Races

Abstract

SHORTLY after the War, Capt. Pitt-Rivers took a course at Oxford in psychological and anthropological studies. Thus equipped, and undeterred by the fact that he would be re-traversing the field of research in which had laboured the late W. H. R. Rivers, one of the most brilliant of twentieth-century psychologists and anthropologists, he embarked for the South Pacific islands to undertake a further inquiry into the effect of the impact of alien peoples upon the indigenous tribes. The fruit of his researches is presented in this volume, which bears comparison with those of his famous predecessor for breadth of treatment of subject matter, and exceeds them in its clarity of expression and fearlessness of exposition. Capt. Pitt-Rivers's diagnosis of the complaint from which the primitive communities in Oceania are suffering, and his general conclusions regarding the effects of European exploitation and later well-intentioned British administration, are much the same as those of other objective observers; yet he achieves such novelty of treatment that his book must be read. The Clash of Culture and the Contact of Races: an Anthropological and Psychological study of the Laws of Racial Adaptability, with special reference to the Depopulation of the Pacific and the Government of Subject Races. By George Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers. Pp. xiv + 312. (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1927.) 18s. net.