HANDOUT 1: Social Darwinism and Colonial Praxis.
1904 - German near-complete
annihilation of Herero (80 thousands). <New York Times>, May 31, 1998:
“Gen. Lothar von Trotha, notorious for his butchery in German East Africa, was
dispatched with10,000 volunteers and a battle plan. Von Trotha pushed the Herero guerrillas
and their families north to Waterberg and then attacked from three sides,
leaving one exit: the Omaheke Desert. When the Herero fled into it, he poisoned
the water holes, erected guard posts along a 150-mile line and bayoneted
everyone who crawled out. He then issued the Vernichtungsbefehl, or
extermination order: "Within the German borders, every Herero, whether
armed or unarmed, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall not accept any
more women or children. I shall drive them back to their people -- otherwise I
shall order shots to be fired at them."
The remaining Herero were rounded up and sent to labor
camps, where they starved or died of overwork, typhus and smallpox. By 1907 the
order had been denounced and von Trotha had been recalled -- but the rebellion
had been crushed. Before the war there were 80,000 Herero. In the 1911
census, 15,000 were found”.
2 Ideology
of the Imperialism: Racism and Social Darwinism. 1898, Lord Salisbury
(1830-1903) – “the living race has the right to take the land from a dying
race”
1900-1904,
German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904)’s Lebensraum theory.
Social Darwinist politician: Pres. Theodore Roosevelt
(1858-1919) : <The Winning of the West>: "it is impossible to accord
the savages the same rules of international morality which obtained between
stable and cultured communities". "conquest
and settlement by the whites of the Indian lands were necessary to the
greatness of the race and to the well-being of civilized mankind".
<Expansion and Peace> (1899):
"civilized man can keep peace only by subduing his barbarian neighbours;
for the barbarian will yield only to force".
3.
Outlook of the development of Racism/Social Darwinism
17th C.
– formation of the concept of ”blackness”.
18th C. – first
detailed descriptions of ”black inferiority”: William Tyson, <Orang-Outang,
or The Anatomy of a Pigmye>, 1709: "Blacks – halfway from the animals
to humans”.
18th C. Malthusianism
– ideas on “superfluous population” and “inevitable struggle for
resources”.
1799 – first
”classic” racist treatise: Charles White, <An Account of the Regular
Graduations in Man>.
19th C., first
half - George Cuvier – idea of the ”extinction of unfit species”.
1850s –
beginnings of “scientific” racism - Robert Knox, <The Races of Man>:
"Race is everything: literature, science, art, in a word, civilization,
depend on it". "Dark races" : "the Saxon race will never
tolerate them - never amalgamate - never be at peace". Necessity of
“extermination of all the colored races”.
1859 - Darwin, <The Origin of Species>:
"the improved and modified descendants of a species will generally cause
the extinction of the parent species". 즉, 걎he
less intellectual races being exterminated".
1863 – establishment
of the Anthropological Society in London. Introductory talk – “the extinction
of races”.
1864 - W.W.Reade, <Savage Africa>: proposal
to ”annihilate all blacks” and make Africa Europe’s ”park”.
1864 - A.R.Wallace,
systematization of the ”principe of natural selection”.
1866 - F.Farrar,
<Aptitude of the Races> - "half-civilized" Chinese versus
“irreclaimable savages”.
1868 - W.Greg,
raises the problem of ”overcivilization” inside Europe. Solution –
“revitalization” through imperialism: “Exterminate, govern, supercede, fight,
eat, or work the inferior tribes out of existence".
1871 - Ch.Darwin,
<The Descent of Man> - ”blacks” as ”half-primates”.
Francis Galton (1822-1911) – ”eugenics”: “This is precisely the aim of Eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the Fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; Eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock”
Thomas Huxley, <Evolution and Ethics>
(1894): ” There is
another fallacy which appears to me to pervade the so-called "ethics of
evolution." It is the notion that because, on the whole, animals and
plants have advanced in perfection of organization by means of the struggle for
existence and the consequent "survival of the fittest"; therefore men
in society, men as ethical beings, must look to the same process to help them
towards perfection. I suspect that this fallacy has arisen out of the unfortunate
ambiguity of the phrase "survival of the fittest."
"Fittest" has a connotation of "best"; and about
"best" there hangs a moral flavor. In cosmic nature, however, what is
"fittest" depends upon the conditions. Long since, I ventured to
point out that if our hemisphere were to cool again, the survival of the
fittest might bring about, in the vegetable kingdom, a population of more and
more stunted and humbler and humbler organisms, until the "fittest"
that survived might be nothing but lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic
organisms as those which give red snow its color; while, if it became hotter,
the pleasant valleys of the Thames and Isis might be uninhabitable by any
animated beings save those that flourish in a tropical jungle. They, as the
fittest, the best adapted to the changed conditions, would survive.
Men in society are undoubtedly subject to the cosmic
process. As among other animals, multiplication goes on without cessation, and
involves severe competition for the means of support. The struggle for
existence tends to eliminate those less fitted to adapt themselves to the
circumstances of their existence. The strongest, the most self-assertive, tend
to tread down the weaker. But the influence of the cosmic process on the
evolution of society is the greater the more rudimentary its civilization.
Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the
substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the
end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in
respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are
ethically the best.
William Sumner, <The Challenge of
Facts> (1914): “Another development of the same philosophy is the doctrine
that men come into the world endowed with "natural rights," or as
joint inheritors of the "rights of man," which have been
"declared" times without number during the last century. The divine rights of man have
succeeded to the obsolete divine right of kings. If it is true, then, that a
man is born with rights, he comes into the world with claims on somebody
besides his parents. Against whom does he hold such rights? There can be no
rights against nature or against God. A man may curse his fate because he is
born of an inferior race, or with an hereditary disease, or blind, or, as some
members of the race seem to do, because they are born females; but they get no
answer to their imprecations. But, now, if men have rights by birth, these
rights must hold against their fellow-men and must mean that somebody else is
to spend his energy to sustain the existence of the persons so born. What then
becomes of the natural rights of the one whose energies are to be diverted from
his own interests? If it be said that we should all help each other, that means
simply that the race as a whole should advance and expand as much and as fast
as it can in its career on earth; and the experience on which we are now acting
has shown that we shall do this best under liberty and under the organization
which we are now developing, by leaving each to exert his energies for his own
success. The notion of natural rights is destitute of sense, but it is
captivating, and it is the more available on account of its vagueness. It lends
itself to the most vicious kind of social dogmatism, for if a man has natural
rights, then the reasoning is clear up to the finished socialistic doctrine
that a man has a natural right to whatever he needs, and that the measure of
his claims is the wishes which he wants fulfilled. If, then, he has need, who
is bound to satisfy it for him? Who holds the obligation corresponding to his
right? It must be the one who possesses what will satisfy that need, or else
the state which can take the possession from those who have earned and saved
it, and give it to him who needs it and who, by the hypothesis, has not earned
and saved it.”
Ideology of Imperialism – refutation
of the human right theory, ideas on inborn inequality, “cosmic laws of struggle
for existence”, and “necessity of the extinction of the inferior”.