Empire and the ‘science of man'
The building of the British Empire was deeply implicated in the collective goal of inculcating pride and confidence in Britain as a nation-state, and as something close to a spiritual and intellectual ideal.
Ideas of Britishness and the place of Britons in world history metamorphosed unalterably during the long phase of expansion. The establishment of pockets of Britishness around the world encouraged the movement of English-speaking people between the British Isles and colonies, and from one colony to another. This great flow occurred in unison with the transmission of information and commodities. As Felix Driver has written, ‘imperial expansion was part of a larger process of European “out- thrust”, which yielded an unprecedented volume of data from the newly discovered worlds of the “periphery” ’.6 Scientific and other sorts of information were transmitted via interpersonal networks that extended around the world. In the colonies as well as in imperial centres, societies for the advancement of scientific and geographical knowledge prospered during the nineteenth century, supporting each other through the exchange of journals and other publications.7 Zoe Laidlaw argues that these networks, and the ‘information revolution’ they unleashed, are highly revealing of the mechanics of empire.8 Colonial networks were key manifestations of ‘informal empire’, a concept devised in the 1950s by John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson.9 The notion of ‘informal empire’ suggests a framework for analysing the diffusion of British (or more broadly Western) concepts along avenues that ignored or circumvented formal channels of officialdom and governance. Such a framework is useful—and arguably essential—for understanding the transformation of science under imperial conditions.Notes and Queries on Anthropology for the Use of Travellers and Residents in Uncivilized Lands was first published in 1874 by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
The title makes it plain that diligent amateurs were the target audience and that anthropology depended upon the types of network for collection and exchange of data that naturalists had long exploited. Henrika Kuklick puts particular emphasis on this aspect of anthropology’s genealogy: ‘Its intellectual roots drew upon classics, biblical studies, and philosophy, but it is best appreciated as a type of natural history... that could be used to manage the nation’s resources of people and land.’10 Handbooks such as Notes and Queries on Anthropology became promotional texts that championed the public benefits of advancing this new science. Driver argues that books of this genre had the underlying objective of positioning ‘the scientific explorer as the travelling eye of metropolitan science’.11 They encouraged ‘an authoritative “way of seeing” in the field, differentiating the view of scientific explorer from that of ordinary traveller’.12 Colonists who lived on the frontier, or wayfarers whose adventures brought them into contact with ‘primitive’ people, were the readers envisaged. Such persons might feel inspired to advance science by becoming fieldworkers.Imperial notions of hierarchy, in which denizens of the metropole naturally assumed a commanding role, were thoroughly embedded in this system of data collection. In theory, though not always in practice, reporters in the colonies were expected to read the instructions in Notes and Queries (or similar manuals) and record observations of native people in the prescribed fashion. They would send the data to Britain for consideration by persons further up the scientific food chain. This line of command, with dependence on secondhand evidence, might seem surprising, for anthropology, as commonly perceived, now requires that a researcher be thoroughly immersed in a foreign culture or society over a sustained period, eventually to bear witness to the experience through publications. In the nineteenth century, however, this was not the case.13 The leading Victorian proponents of the discipline, such as Sir Edward Tylor, Andrew Lang and Sir James Frazer, had no personal contact with the ‘savage’ races that provided the subject of their often luxuriant theorisations.
Tylor, a British academic who in 1896 became Oxford’s first Professor of Anthropology, was among the contributors to the initial edition of Notes and Queries. A composite creation, the book consisted of one hundred contributions from an array of scientists, including some of the most renowned of the era. Tylor advised readers on methods to document the languages, arithmetical systems and other customs of the ‘uncivilised’. Francis Galton, the pioneer of eugenics, contributed suggestions on how to estimate population figures and compile statistical evidence. There was even a contribution from ‘C. Darwin, Esq., F.R.S.’ (a cousin of Galton’s) on physiognomy. The reason why these illustrious personages were united to foster a systematic study of humanity is explained in the Preface:
Travellers have usually recorded only those customs of modern savages which they have chanced to observe; and, as a rule, they have observed chiefly those which their experience of civilized institutions has led them to look for. Nor are there wanting instances in which the information thus obtained has been lamentably distorted in order to render it in harmony with preconceived ideas; owing to this and other causes, the imperfections of the anthropological record surpass those of other sciences, and false theories are often built upon imperfect bases of induction.14
The horrific prospect of disseminating ‘false theories’ was bad enough, but, as Notes and Queries went on to explain, anthropology was threatened, almost before it had properly begun, by the ‘rapid extermination of savages at the present time’.15 The destructive effect of empire upon the very phenomena that it was rendering visible to the scientific gaze is one of anthropology’s many contradictions, helping account for the sense of urgency that drove the discipline in this formative stage.
Notes and Queries provides significant insights into British anthropology in the 1870s and beyond. The book was divided into two main parts, the first, ‘Constitution of Man’, concerning human physiology, or what now is ‘physical anthropology’.
The second was titled ‘Culture’. The anthropological fieldworker (presumed to be male) might first follow the directions of Part I and study the bodies of his subjects, using callipers and other prescribed instruments to secure cranial and other dimensions. He would attend also to other physical characteristics, including skin colour, hair type, odour, ‘development and decay’ and ‘abnormalities’. He could then turn to Part II and pursue the subject of ‘Culture’, as inventoried under seventy-six separate topic headings, ranging from astronomy, medicine and food, to old favourites of the colonial mindset such as cannibalism, morals, narcotics, crime, fetishes, superstitions and witchcraft.The variety of topics suggests that much was expected of the neophyte anthropologist. In practice, the few residents of ‘uncivilised lands’ who chose to conduct anthropological fieldwork were compelled to be selective. The manual is notable because a number of key subjects that would define not only anthropology, but also sociology and psychology, were in some way addressed. Chief among them were religion, belief systems and mythology; marriage, social relations and kinship terminology; ceremonial life, encompassing weddings, funerals and initiations; relationships with the natural world as expressed in totems; languages and dialects; and technology, including weapons, craft and fine art.