Johann Friedrich Blumenbach : race and natural history, 1750-1850
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach : race and natural history, 1750-1850
(Studies in the history of science, technology and medicine / edited by John Krige)
Routledge, 2019
- : hbk
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The major significance of the German naturalist-physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) as a topic of historical study is the fact that he was one of the first anthropologists to investigate humankind as part of natural history. Moreover, Blumenbach was, and continues to be, a central figure in debates about race and racism.
How exactly did Blumenbach define race and races? What were his scientific criteria? And which cultural values did he bring to bear on his scheme? Little historical work has been done on Blumenbach's fundamental, influential race work. From his own time till today, several different pronouncements have been made by either followers or opponents, some accusing Blumenbach of being the fountainhead of scientific racism. By contrast, across early nineteenth-century Europe, not least in France, Blumenbach was lionized as an anti-racist whose work supported the unity of humankind and the abolition of slavery.
This collection of essays considers how, with Blumenbach and those around him, the study of natural history and, by extension, that of science came to dominate the Western discourse of race.
Table of Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part I: Blumenbach Studies 1. A Brief history of Blumenbach representation (Nicolaas Rupke and Gerhard Lauer) 2. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach-online (Gerhard Lauer, Wolfgang Boeker and Heiko Weber)
- Part II: Defining Human Races 3. Buffon, Blumenbach, Herder, Lichtenberg, and the origins of modern anthropology (Carl Niekerk) 4. Climate change and creolization in French natural history, 1750-1795. (Emma Spary). 5. Blumenbach's collection of human skulls (Wolfgang Boeker) 6. Blumenbach's theory of human races and the natural unity of humankind (Thomas Junker) 7. A defence of human rights: Blumenbach on albinism (Renato Mazzolini)
- Part III: Racism, anti-racism, and Eurocentricity 8. Blumenbach's race science in the light of Christian supersessionism (Terence Keel) 9. The beautiful skulls of Schiller and the Georgian girl: quantitative and aesthetic scaling of the races, 1750-1850 (Robert J. Richards) 10. Ethnographic exploration in the Blumenbachian tradition (Peter Hanns Reill) 11. The rise of paleontology and the historicization of nature: Blumenbach and Deluc (John H. Zammito) 12. The origins of scientific racism and Huxley's Rule (Nicolaas Rupke)
- Appendix: Biographical sketch
- Index
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