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Concept
Anthropological Society of London
Summary
The Anthropological Society of London (ASL) was a short-lived organisation of the 1860s whose founders aimed to furnish scientific evidence for white supremacy which they construed in terms of polygenism. It was founded in 1863 by Richard Francis Burton and James Hunt. Hunt had previously been the secretary of the Ethnological Society of London, which was founded in 1843. When he founded the breakaway ASL, Hunt claimed that society had "the object of promoting the study of Anthropology in a strictly scientific manner". Nevertheless he reminded his audience that, whatever evidence might be uncovered, "we still know that the Races of Europe now have much in their mental and moral nature which the races of Africa have not got." The ASL only lasted 8 years: following Hunt's death in 1869 it was absorbed into the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
James Hunt had encountered the disgraced Edinburgh anatomist, Robert Knox in 1855. During the trial of the grave robbers Burke and Hare, Knox had been exposed as the anatomist for whom they had procured their victims bodies. Despite attacks by hostile mobs, he continued as an anatomist despite never regaining such a steady source of dead bodies. He was debarred from running further teaching
by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh after falsifying records and expelled from the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
The real differences between the two societies ran much deeper. The members of the Ethnological Society were, on the whole, inclined to believe that humans were shaped by their environment; when Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution by natural selection, they supported it. They also advocated in monogenism and tended to be politically liberal, especially on matters related to race.
Hunt and his closest followers tended to be supporters of polygenism and sceptical of Darwin (though they made him an honorary fellow). They found the Ethnological Society's politics distasteful, and (for example) supported the Confederacy in the American Civil War.
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