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PHRENOLOGY, CORRESPONDENCE, AND THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF REFORM, 1815–1848*

Part of: Retrospect: Science in History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2016

JAMES POSKETT
JAMES POSKETT*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
Darwin College, University of Cambridge, Silver Street, Cambridge, cb3 9eujdgp2@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

Like many nineteenth-century sciences, phrenology had global aspirations. Skulls were collected in Egypt and Ceylon, societies exchanged journals between India and the United States, and phrenological bestsellers were sold in Shanghai and Tokyo. Despite this wealth of interaction, existing accounts treat phrenology within neat national and urban settings. In contrast, this article examines phrenology as a global political project. During an age in which character dominated public discourse, phrenology emerged as a powerful political language. In this article, I examine the role that correspondence played in establishing material connections between phrenologists and their political concerns, ranging from the abolition of slavery to the reform of prison discipline. Two overarching arguments run throughout my case-studies. First, phrenologists used correspondence to establish reform as a global project. Second, phrenology allowed reformers to present their arguments in terms of a new understanding of human character. More broadly, this article connects political thought with the global history of science.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 409 - 442
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

Janet Browne, Simon Schaffer, Jim Secord, Sujit Sivasundaram, Alice Poskett, and three anonymous referees all provided invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this article. I would like to thank the Master and Fellows of both Trinity College and Darwin College at the University of Cambridge for supporting my research, first under the Tarner Studentship and then as the Adrian Research Fellow. The British Society for the History of Science and the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University provided additional funding for archival work in Scotland and the United States respectively, for which I am most grateful.

References

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56 B. Fladeland, Men and brothers: Anglo-American antislavery cooperation (Champaign, IL, 1972), p. 292.

57 Caldwell to Combe, 14 June 1839, MS7249, fo. 137, Combe papers.

58 Combe to Channing, 28 Mar. 1838, MS7395, fo. 12, Combe papers.

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70 D. Barton and N. Hall, ‘Introduction’, in Barton and Hall, eds., Letter writing as a social practice, p. 7, note the gendered forms letter-writing could take.

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104 Ibid., pp. 503–13.

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128 Paterson to Combe, 20 July 1825, MS7216, fo. 46, Combe papers.

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130 Paterson to Combe, 20 July 1825, MS7216, fo. 46, Combe papers, and Paterson to Bell, [1825], College of Physicians.

131 Paterson to Bell, [1825], College of Physicians.

132 Ibid.

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134 Paterson to Bell, [1825], College of Physicians.

135 P. Acharya, ‘Education in Old Calcutta’, in S. Chaudhuri, ed., Calcutta: the living city (2 vols., Oxford, 1990), i, pp. 86–8.

136 Paterson to Bell, [1825], College of Physicians.

137 D. Drummond, Objections to phrenology: being the substance of a series of papers communicated to the Calcutta Phrenological Society (Calcutta, 1829), pp. 62, 89, and 113.

138 Beatson to Combe, 28 Jan. 1827, MS7219, fo. 3, Combe papers.

139 Paterson to Combe, 10 May 1823, MS7211, fo. 7, Combe papers.

140 Drummond, Objections, p. 8; and Paterson to Bell, [1825], College of Physicians.

141 Combe to Beatson, 23 May 1826, MS7383, fo. 317, Combe papers.

142 Paterson to Bell, [1825], College of Physicians.

143 Paterson to Combe, 23 Apr. 1825, MS7216, fo. 47, Combe papers.

144 Tomlinson, Head masters, p. x.

145 Combe, Notes, i, pp. 64–5.

146 Combe to Mann, 25 Apr. 1839, MS7396, fo. 55, Combe papers.

147 Combe to Mann, 29 Dec. 1844, MS7390, fo. 16, Combe papers.

148 Combe to Mann, 5 July 1844, MS7398, fo. 26, Combe papers.

149 Combe to Mann, [Dec. 1840], MS7388, fo. 278, Combe papers.

150 Tomlinson, Head masters, pp. ix–x.

151 Howe to Combe, 5 Mar. 1839, MS7251, fo. 49, Combe papers; and Combe, Notes, i, p. 61.

152 Howe to Mann, 19 Mar. 1838, 1137, MS Am 2119, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MA, USA.

153 Mann to Combe, 22 July 1853, MS7335, fo. 17, Combe papers.

154 S. Sanders, ‘Antioch College: establishing the faith’, in J. Hodges, J. O'Donnell, and J. Oliver, eds., Cradles of conscience: Ohio's independent colleges and universities (Kent, OH, 2003), p. 13; and Tomlinson, Head masters, p. 291.

155 Howe to Combe, 29 Sept. 1840, MS7255, fo. 101, Combe papers.

156 Combe to Mann, 30 Apr. 1841, MS7388, fo. 511, Combe papers.

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158 Moyn and Sartori, ‘Approaches to global intellectual history’, p. 17.

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161 Secord, J., ‘Knowledge in transit’, Isis , 95 (2004), pp. 654–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 656, argues that we should understand ‘knowledge as communication’.

162 For a critique of global histories which ignore limits, see F. Cooper, Colonialism in question: theory, knowledge, history (Berkley, CA, 2005), pp. 91–112; and Hodges, S., ‘The global menace’, Social History of Medicine , 25 (2012), pp. 719–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

163 Staff, The penny post, pp. 126–40, 149–52.

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165 Bose to Combe, 7 Aug. 1846, MS7278, fos. 33–4, Combe papers.

166 Kapila, ‘Race matters’, pp. 502–11; and Rusert, ‘The science of freedom’, pp. 301–4.

167 Maconochie to Combe, 31 Aug. 1844, MS7273, fo. 30, Combe papers.

168 Combe, ‘Penal colonies’, p. 114.

169 Combe to Mann, 29 Dec. 1844, MS7390, fo. 16, Combe papers.

170 Combe to Mott, 28 Oct. 1847, MS7391, fo. 139, Combe papers.

171 Mott to Combe, 28 May 1850, MS7310, fo. 27, Combe papers.

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174 Hindus, Prison and plantation, pp. 178, 236–7.

175 It was not until the 1820s that abolitionists came to associate their work with the term ‘reform’, D. Turley, The culture of English antislavery, 1780–1860 (London, 2003), p. 183.

176 On the development of ‘reform’ as a political ideology, see A. Burns and J. Innes, ‘Introduction’, and Innes, ‘“Reform” in English public life’; and Beales ‘The idea of reform’.

177 Struve to Combe, 3 July 1848, MS7297, fo. 115, Combe papers.

178 Struve to Combe, 28 Aug. 1846, MS7282, fo. 103, Combe papers.

179 Struve to Combe, 9 Aug. 1848, MS7297, fo. 117, Combe papers.

180 P. Wende, ‘1848: reform or revolution in Germany and Great Britain’, in Blanning and Wende, eds., Reform in Great Britain and Germany; and Innes, ‘“Reform”’ in English public life’, pp. 86–8.

181 Combe to Struve, 31 July 1848, MS7391, fo. 496, Combe papers.

182 Struve to Combe, 30 Aug. 1849, MS7304, fo. 15, Combe papers.