18th-Century Anthropology

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READINGS

Albinus, Bernard Siegried.

Sede et caussa colris aethiopum et caeterorum hominum (Leyden: Apud Theodorum Haak; Amsterdam: Apud Jacobum Graal & Henicum de Leth, 1737). Translated handout.

Baudet, Henri.

Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man, trans. Elizabeth Wentholt (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1988).

Berkhofer, Robert F., Jr.

The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present, Parts 1-3 (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).

Bitterli, Urs.

Cultures in Conflict: Encounters Between European and Non-European Cultures, 1492-1800, trans. Ritchie Robertson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989).

Blake, William.

“The Little Black Boy,” in Joseph Hartley Wicksteed, Blake’s Innocence and Experience (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1928).

Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich.

On the Natural Varieties of Mankind: De generis humanivarietate nativa, ed. and trans. Thomas Bendyshe (New York: Bergman Publishers, 1969).

Buffon, Georges Louis LeClerc, Count de.

“Of the Varieties in the Human Species,” Barr’s Buffon, Buffon’s Natural History Containing a Theory of the Earth, A General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, etc. v. 4 of 10 (London: T. Gillet, 1807): 190-352.

Cameron, Nigel.

Barbarians and Mandarins: Thirteen Centuries of Western Travelers in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970): chapter 3, 6-9.

Camper, Peter [Petrus].

“Account of the Organs of Speech of the Orang Outang,” Philosophical Transactions 69 (1779): 139-159. Handout.

Camper, Petrus.

“Lecture on the Origin and Color of Blacks, Given in the Anatomy Lecture Hall, at Groningen, November 14, 1764,” in Miriam Meijer, The Anthropology of Petrus Camper (1722-1789) (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1992): 335-359. Reprint. “Petrus Camper on the Origin and Color of Blacks,” History of Anthropology Newsletter 24 (December 1997): 3-9.

Cohen, William B.

The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530-1880 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980): chapters 1-3, 5, and 8.

Cuvier, Georges.

Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, trans. William Ross (London: Longman and Rees, 1802), v. 2, pp. 2-11. Handout.

Darnell, Regna, ed.

Readings in the History of Anthropology (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), chapters 2, 5-13, and all of the Introductions.

Daubenton, Louis Jean Marie.

“Essay on the Differences of the Position of the Occipital Foramen in Man and in Animals,” Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences avec les Mémoires de Mathématique & de Physique (Paris) (1764): 568-579. Meijer's translated handout.

Descartes, René.

“Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason,” The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), v. 1.

Diderot, Denis.

“Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage,” Diderot’s Selected Writings, trans. Derek Coltman (New York: MacMillan, 1966).

Douthwaite, Julia V.

“Rewriting the Savage: The Extraordinary Fictions of the Wild Girl of Champagne,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 28 (1994): 163-192.

Gilman, Sander L.

On Blackness without Blacks: Essays on the Image of the Black in Germany (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982): chapter 2.

Greene, John C.

The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1959).

Harris, Marvin.

The Rise of Anthropological Theory, A History of Theories of Culture (New York: Harper and Row, 1968): chapters 2-4.

Herder, Johann Gottfried von.

“Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind” (1784-91), chapters III-V, VII-IX, in J. G. Herder on Social and Political Culture, trans. F. M. Barnard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

Hodgen, Margaret T.

Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964).

Jordan, Winthrop D.

White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968): chapters 4, 6, 13.

Marshall, P. J. and Glyndwr Williams

The Great Map of Mankind: Perceptions of New Worlds in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).

Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis Moreau de.

“Varieties in the Species of Man,” The Earthly Venus, trans. Simone Brangier Boas (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1966).

Montagu, Ashley, ed.

Frontiers of Anthropology (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974): chapters 1-4, 6-13, 27, 31-32, and 34.

Polo, Marco.

“Kublai Khan,” The Travels of Marco Polo, ed. Manuel Komroff (New York: Modern Library, 1953).

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques.

A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind (London: Dodsley, 1761).

Rymer, Russ.

“A Silent Childhood-Part I,” The New Yorker (April 13, 1992): 41-81. “A Silent Childhood-Part II,” The New Yorker (April 20, 1992): 43-77.

Smith, Bernard.

European Vision and the South Pacific (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985): chapters 1-5.

Soemmerring, Samuel Thomas.

Selections from “On the Comparative Anatomy of the Negro and European” in Julien Joseph Virey, Natural History of the Negro Race, trans. J. H. Guenebault (Charleston, South Carolina: 1837): 57-75.

Stepan, Nancy.

The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800-1960 (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1982): chapters 1-2.

Tillyard, Eustace M. W.

The Elizabethan World Picture (New York: MacMillan, 1944): chapters 4-5.

Wittkower, Rudolf.

“Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 159-197.

Yerkes, Robert M. and Ada W.

The Great Apes: A Study of Anthropoid Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970): chapters 2-4.

EUROPEAN CONCEPT OF THE CHAIN OF BEING

MAN
Orangutan
Monkey
QUADRUPEDS
Flying Squirrel
Bat
Ostrich
BIRDS
Aquatic Birds
Amphibious Birds
Flying Fish
FISH
Crawling Fish
Eels
Water Snakes
REPTILES
Slugs
Snails
SHELLFISH
Tubular Worms
Moths
INSECTS
Gallflies
Tape-Worm
Polyps
Sea-Anemone
Sensitive Plants
PLANTS
Lichens
Moulds
Mushrooms, Agarics
Truffles
Corals, Coraloids
Lithophyte
Asbestos, Amianthus
Talcs, Gypsums, Selenites
Slates
STONES
Formed Stones
Crystallizations
Salts
Vitriols
METALS
Semi-Metals
SULPHURS
Bitumens
EARTHS
Pure Earth
WATER
AIR
FIRE
MORE SUBTILE MATTERS

This particular expression of the Chain of Being is from Charles Bonnet, Oeuvres d'Histoire naturelle et de philosophie (Neuchâtel: Samuel Fauche, 1779), v. 1, p. 1. English translation in Charles White, An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables; and from the Former to the Latter (London: C. Dilly, 1799), pp. 17-18 and also in Lorin Anderson, “Charles Bonnet’s Taxonomy and Chain of Being,” Journal of the History of Ideas 37 (1976): 48-49.

Secondary sources on the Chain of Being:

Cohen, William B.

“The Chain of Being,” The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530-1880. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980, pp. 86-89.

Hodgen, Margaret T.

“The Place of the Savage in the Chain of Being,” Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964, pp. 386-430.

Jordan, Winthrop D.

White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968, pp. 216-239 and “The Negro Bound by the Chain of Being,” chapter XIII.

Kuntz, Marion and Paul, eds.

Jacob’s Ladder and the Tree of Life: Concepts of Hierarchy and the Great Chain of Being. New York: Peter Lang, 1987.

Lovejoy, Arthur O.

The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960.

Stepan, Nancy.

“Race and the Return of the Great Chain of Being, 1800-50,” The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800-1960. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1982, pp. 1-19.

Tillyard, Eustace M. W.

“The Chain of Being” and “The Links in the Chain,” The Elizabethan World Picture. New York: MacMillan, 1944, pp. 23-76.