Anthropological Society of London

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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Anthropological Society of London

Monogenism

Monogenism or sometimes monogenesis is the theory of human origins which posits a common descent for all human races. The negation of monogenism is polygenism. This issue was hotly debated in the Western world in the nineteenth century, as the assumptions of scientific racism came under scrutiny both from religious groups and in the light of developments in the life sciences and human science. It was integral to the early conceptions of ethnology.

Charles Darwin

'Charles Robert Darwin' (ˈdɑrwɪn ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.