Justifications for Imperialism

1. Justifications for Imperialism THE “CIVILIZING MISSION” SOCIAL DARWINISM, ETC.

2. (1) The “Civilizing Mission”

3. Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden (1899): Take up the White Man’s burden – Send forth the best ye breed – Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild – Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.

5. Speech by Jules Ferry, French PM in 1880s We must say openly that indeed the higher races have a right over the lower races … I repeat, that the superior races have a right because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races … In the history of earlier centuries these duties, gentlemen, have often been misunderstood; and certainly when the Spanish soldiers and explorers introduced slavery into Central America, they did not fulfill their duty as men of a higher race … But, in our time, I maintain that European nations acquit themselves with generosity, with grandeur, and with the sincerity of this superior civilizing duty.

6. (2) Social Darwinism, Etc.

7. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), a Social Darwinist • humans evolve from simple to complex • happens b/c of brutal economic struggle • struggle’s outcome determined by “survival of the fittest” • applied to social classes: • rich = strong • poor = weak • applied to nations and races: • “civilized” races (whites) = strong • “uncivilized” races (non-whites) = weak

8. George Combe, A System of Phrenology (1825) When we regard the different quarters of the globe, we are struck with the extreme dissimilarity in the attainments of the varieties of men who inhabit them … The history of Africa, so far as Africa can be said to have a history … exhibit[s] one unbroken scene of moral and intellectual desolation … ‘The negro, easily excitable, is in the highest degree susceptible to all the passions .. To the negro, remove only pain and hunger, and it is naturally a state of enjoyment. As soon as his toils are suspended for a moment, he sings, he seizes a fiddle, he dances’.

9. Combe said that the reason for this backwardness was the peculiar shape of “the skull of the negro”: “The organs of Veneration, Wonder and Hope … are considerable in size. The greatest deficiencies lie in Conscientiousness, Cautiousness, Ideality and Reflection.” George Combe, A System of Phrenology (1825)

10. Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius (1869) The “science” of “eugenics”: • “man’s natural abilities are derived by inheritance” • “out of two varieties of any race of animal who are equally endowed in other respects, the most intelligent variety is sure to prevail in the battle of life” • on a 16-point scale of racial intelligence, a “Negro” is two grades below an Englishman

11. Galton’s view of the British social class structure

12. Galton’s composite photography

13. Karl Pearson (1857-1936), the first Galton Professor of Eugenics at University College London • improving welfare/health care in Britain is bad  • allows genetically inferior individuals to survive • “The right to live does not connote the right of man to reproduce his kind.” (Darwinism, Medical Progress and Parentage, 1912) • war is a necessary form of natural selection  • supports force/war in empire creation