Race before Darwin

Between 1600 and 1850, from the works of William Camden to the works of Charles Darwin, the English constantly struggled with the problem of how to define their national identity and origin. For most of this period, such work was done in a religious context---the sacred origin of mankind laid out in the Bible. By the end of this period, some English thinkers turned to more secular theories grounded in the human sciences developed on the continent and to the work of Charles Darwin, defining English identity in terms of secular racial theories. This work examines the roots of nineteenth century English conceptions of race in four major areas of debate in seventeenth and eighteenth century England: religion, the Anglo-Saxon origins of the English, citizenship, and slavery. These debates showed the persisting strength of Christian theories of the origin of humanity and its division into nations, a strength which hampered the advance of scientific racial theories in England. The persisting strength of English religion hampered any adoption of secular racial thought by providing an alternate explanation of human diversity. Continuing debates over English origins also shaped racial ideas in an era in which the terms nation and race blurred together. Affirming an Anglo-Saxon origin for the English affected political questions and racial theorizing. Race, citizenship and nationality were all bound up together, and debates about nationalization of immigrants became arguments about the racial composition of England as well. Finally, the issue of slavery and the rise of abolitionism prompted further debate on the question of race at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Prichardian school of ethnology sought to reconcile the old English religious systems of race with the modern science developed on the continent and held off secular racial theories for decades longer than on the Continent, though in the end, some Englishmen came to hold them. The collapse of sacred ethnological thought opened the way for acceptance of racial theories, if not their total triumph.