Race and the Crisis of Humanism

The idea of race underwent a radical shift in the mid-19th Century. Whereas the difference races of 'man' were previously understood as 'tribal' or 'national' varieties of an essentially unified humanity, by 1850 racial difference was understood to be fundamentally biological, and the different races came to be regarded as permanent types. The idea that humankind constituted a unity, albeit at different stages of 'development', was in the 19th century challenged with a new way of thinking, when the 'savagery' of certain races was no longer regarded as a stage in their progress towards 'civilisation', but as their permanent state. What caused this shift? In Kay Anderson's provocative new account, she argues that British colonial encounters in Australia from the late 1700s with the apparently unimproved condition of the Australian Aborigine, viewed against an understanding of 'humanity' of the time (that is, as characterised by separation from nature), precipitated a crisis in existing ideas of what it meant to be human. As consternation grew not only about their inclination but about their very capacity for improvement, and particularly for cultivation, the Aborigines challenged the basis upon which the unity of humankind had been assumed. The intractable Aborigine came to supply seemingly irrefutable evidence for an essential, permanent and innate racial difference; and so came to provide the strongest support for those who maintained the intrinsic inferiority of the 'dark-skinned' races more generally. This lucid, intelligent and persuasive argument will be necessary reading for all scholars and their upper-level students interested in history and theories of 'race', Australian studies, colonial history, critical human geography and anthropology.