Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T07:20:07.574Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Noble American Science of Imperial Relations and Its Laws of Race Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2010

Robert Vitalis*
Affiliation:
Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

Extract

Political scientists in early-twentieth-century America who traced the nineteenth-century origins of their field pointed to the British theorist and statesmen, George Cornewall Lewis (1806–1863). His best-known work is An Essay on the Government of Dependencies (1841). Lewis defined the science of politics as comprising three parts: the nature of the relation between a sovereign government and its subjects, the relation between the sovereign governments of independent communities, and “the relation of a dominant and a dependent community; or, in other words, the relation of supremacy and dependence.” Modern writers, however, had not yet taken up the nature of the political relation of supremacy and dependency in any systematic way.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 “Books and Politics—An Address on the Completion of a New Library Building at Princeton University” (1898), in The Launching of a University and Other Papers (New York: Dodd, Mead) 1906, 195–219: 214.

2 “The Conquest of the United States by Spain,” delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale University at College Street Hall, New Haven, 16 Jan. 1899; Yale Law Journal 8, 4 (Jan. 1899): 168–93.

3 Quoted in Stocking, George W. Jr., Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982 [1968]), 114Google Scholar.

4 See Fairlie, John A., “Politics and Science,” Scientific Monthly 18, 1 (Jan. 1924): 1837Google Scholar: 21, 24.

5 Lewis, George Cornewall, An Essay on the Government of Dependencies (London: John Murray, 1841), vGoogle Scholar.

6 Burgess, W. Randolph, “Introductory Remarks,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 14, 2 (Jan. 1931): 213–14, 213Google Scholar.

7 See David Long, “Paternalism and the Internationalization of Imperialism: J. A. Hobson on the International Government of the ‘Lower Races,’” 71–92; and Vitalis, Robert, “Birth of a Discipline,” 159–82, both in Long, David and Schmidt, Brian, eds., Imperialism and Internationalism in the Discipline of International Relations (New York: State University of New York Press, 2005)Google Scholar; and Schmidt, Brian, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

8 Ireland, Alleyne, “On the Need for a Scientific Study of Colonial Administration,” Proceedings of the American Political Science Association, vol. 3, Third Annual Meeting (1906): 210–21, 210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Ireland, Alleyne, Tropical Colonization: An Introduction to the Study of the Subject (New York: Macmillan, 1899)Google Scholar.

10 “America's Race Problems. Addresses at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, April 12–13, 1901,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 18, 1 (July 1901).

11 Du Bois, W.E.B., “The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind,” A.M.E. Church Review 17, 2 (Oct. 1900): 95110Google Scholar.

12 In addition to the papers in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 18, “America's Race Problems,” see Carl Kelsey, “The Negro Farmer,” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1903.

13 Herbert, Hilary, “The Race Problem of the South,” Annals 18 (July 1901): 95101, 97, 99Google Scholar.

14 Du Bois, W. E. B., “The Relation of the Negroes to the Whites in the South,” Annals 18 (July 1901): 121–40Google Scholar, 121–22. The paper became chapter 9 of Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1903), titled “Of the Sons of Masters and Men.”

15 Ibid.: 122.

16 See McAfee, Cleland Boyd, “Studies in the American Race Problem,” Journal of the Royal African Society 8, 30 (Jan. 1909): 145–53Google Scholar.

17 For Du Bois at the Congress, see Lewis, David Levering, W. E. B Du Bois—Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 251Google Scholar.

18 Hobson, John, “The Scientific Basis of Imperialism,” Political Science Quarterly 17, 3 (Sept. 1902): 460–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Bay, Mia, “‘The World Was thinking Wrong about Race’: The Philadelphia Negro and Nineteenth-Century Science,” in Katz, Michael and Sugrue, Thomas, eds., W.E.B. Du Bois, Race, and the City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 4160Google Scholar.

20 Ross, Dorothy, Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 128–30Google Scholar. On reform Darwinism, see Bannister, Robert, Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), 137–62Google Scholar.

21 Giddings, Franklin, “Imperialism?Political Science Quarterly 13, 4 (Dec. 1898): 585605CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 585–86.

22 Ibid.: 586–87.

23 Ibid.: 595–99, direct quotes 600.

24 Ibid.: 602–4.

25 Sumner, William, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain,” Yale Law Journal 8, 4 (1899): 168–93, 178CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Burgess, John William, “How May the United States Govern Its Extra-Continental Territory?,” Political Science Quarterly 14, 1 (Mar. 1899): 118, 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, Reminiscences of an American Scholar: The Beginnings of Columbia University (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), 312.

27 Burgess, John William, Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law, vol. 1, “Sovereignty and Liberty” (Boston: Ginn and Company 1890), 39Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., 46.

29 Begin with Pratt, Julius, “The ‘Large Policy’ of 1898,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 19, 2 (Sept. 1932): 219–42, 239CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Burgess, John W., “The Ideal of the American Commonwealth,” Political Science Quarterly 10, 3 (Sept. 1985): 405Google Scholar.

31 Ibid.: 407, 410–11.

32 See most recently Gibb, Paul, “Unmasterly Inactivity? Sir Julian Pauncefote, Lord Salisbury, and the Venezuela Boundary Dispute,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 16 (2005): 2355, 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Burgess, John W., “The Recent Pseudo-Monroeism.” Political Science Quarterly 11, 1 (Mar. 1896): 4467CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Ibid.: 45.

35 Ibid.: 52.

36 Ibid.: 55.

37 Ibid.: 66.

38 Roosevelt, Theodore, “The Monroe Doctrine,” in American Ideals and Other Essays, Social and Political (New York: G. Putnam's Sons, 1897), 220Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., 223.

40 Ibid., 227.

41 Ibid., 227–28.

42 Burgess, John W., “How May the United States Govern Its Extra-Continental Territory?Political Science Quarterly 4, 1 (Mar. 1899): 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Ibid.: 2.

44 Ibid.: 14.

45 Ibid.: 3.

46 Ibid.: 11.

47 Ibid.: 17–18.

48 No new book-length treatment of Hawaiian annexation has appeared since Osborne's, Thomas J, “Empire Can Wait”: American Opposition to Hawaiian Annexation, 1893–1898 (Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, updating the key texts by Julius Pratt in the 1930s, and Merze Tate in the 1960s.

49 Thompson, Lanny, “The Imperial Republic: A Comparison of the Insular Territories under U.S. Dominion after 1898,” Pacific Historical Review 71, 4 (Nov. 2002): 535–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 For the rulings known collectively as “the Insular Cases,” see Smith, Rogers, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 433–39Google Scholar.

51 On the color ban at Harvard, see Painter, Nell, “Jim Crow at Harvard: 1923,” New England Quarterly 44, 4 (Dec. 1971): 627–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Lowell, Albert Lawrence, “The Status of Our New Possessions—A Third View,” Harvard Law Review 13, 3 (Nov. 1899): 155–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 See Lowell, Albert Lawrence, “The Colonial Expansion of the United States,” Atlantic Monthly 83, 496 (Jan. 1899): 145–54Google Scholar.

54 Hart, Albert Bushnell, Actual Government as Applied under American Conditions, 4th rev. ed. (New York: Longmans, Green and Co, 1919 [1903]), 368–69Google Scholar.

55 See Burgess, John W, “The Decision of the Supreme Court in the Insular Cases,” Political Science Quarterly 16, 3 (Sept. 1901): 486504CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Hobson, John, “The Scientific Basis of Imperialism,” Political Science Quarterly 17, 3 (Sept. 1902): 460–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotes 487–88.

57 The World's Work, A History of Our Time 1, 1 (Nov. 1900): 4, 17.

58 For this characterization of progressives, see his “What Is Real Progress in Political Civilization?” 12 Oct. 1921, Box Labeled “Burgess, John W, Manuscripts: Addresses and Articles # 1,” John William Burgess (1844–1931) Papers, Special Collections, Low Library, Columbia University, New York.

59 See John W. Burgess, Recent Changes in Constitutional Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923), http://www.constitution.org/jwb/burgess.htm, ch. 3, “Constitutional Development or Transformation from 1898 to 1914,” unpaginated (unfortunately); and Reminiscences, 312–41; Reconciliation of Government with Liberty (New York: Charles Scriber's Sons, 1915), 358–83; Foundations of Political Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933), 134–40.

60 “The Boston Meeting of the American Historical Association,” American Historical Review 5, 3 (Apr. 1900): 424–25.

61 Ibid.

62 See Silva, Edward and Slaughter, Sheila, “Prometheus Bound: The Limits of Social Science Professionalization in the Progressive Period,” Theory and Society 9, 6 (1980): 781819CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 791–92.

63 See Willoughby, Westel W., “Report of the Secretary for the Year 1904,” Proceedings of the American Political Science Association, vol. 1, First Annual Meeting (1904), 2732Google Scholar, 30.

64 Watson, James, “Bernard Moses: Pioneer in Latin American Scholarship,” Hispanic American Historical Review 42, 2 (1962): 212–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 212.

65 In Rogers, Howard J., ed., Congress of Arts and Sciences, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904, vol. 7 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906), 387–98Google Scholar.

66 Reinsch, Paul, “The Negro Race and European Civilization,” American Journal of Sociology 11, 2 (Sept. 1905): 145–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Ireland, “On the Need for a Scientific Study,” 210.

68 Worcester, Donald, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (New York: Oxford, 2001)Google Scholar, p. 96 for “Anglo-Saxon, and p. 398 for the paraphrase of Powell's vision for the Bureau. Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, 128–29, for Powell's late anthropology.

69 Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, 112, 121.

70 Degler, Carl, In Search of Human Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 15Google Scholar. See, however, a slightly contrasting reading of Darwin in Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, 46–47.

71 See Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, 54–55, 63–65.

72 Ibid., 48–49.

73 Ibid., 240.

74 Quoted in ibid., 244.

75 Reinsch, Paul, “The Negro Race and European Civilization,” American Journal of Sociology 11, 2 (Sept. 1905): 145–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotes in this paragraph from 145–48, 150–52.

76 Ibid.: 154–55.

77 Ibid.: 164–66.

78 Ibid.: 166–67.

79 John H. Harris commenting on the Simon Report for India and as reported in Pacific Affairs 3, 9 (Sept. 1930): 897.

80 Smith, Edwin W., “The Book of the Quarter: Africa Emergent,” Journal of the Royal African Society 38, 150 (Jan. 1939): 75Google Scholar, quoting W. M. Macmillan, as part of a review of his Africa Emergent: A Survey of Social, Political and Economic Trends in British Africa (1938).

81 “Across about twenty years,” Lemarkianism in biology ended “not with a bang but a whimper … as its older defenders passed away and younger biologists directed their research along Mendelian lines.” Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, 254.

82 Ibid., 214.

83 Degler, In Search of Human Nature, 67.

84 Baker, Lee, From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 99126Google Scholar.

85 Du Bois, W. E. B., “The Development of a People,” International Journal of Ethics 14, 3 (Apr. 1904): 292311Google Scholar.

86 See Kelsey, Carl, “The Evolution of Negro Labor,” Annals 21, Current Labor Problems (special issue, Jan. 1903): 5576Google Scholar.

87 Carl Kelsey, comments on Wells, D. Collin, “Social Darwinism,” American Journal of Sociology 12, 5 (Mar. 1907): 711CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Spiiller, Gustav, ed., Papers on Inter-Racial Problems (London: P. S. King, 1911)Google Scholar.

89 Unsigned account, “Science and the Millennium,” Times, 28 July 1911: 8.

90 Julian Go, “Sociology's Imperial Unconscious: The Emergence of American Sociology in the Context of Empire,” in George Steinmetz, ed., Sociology and Empire (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, forthcoming).

91 Escobar, ArturoEncountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 2628Google Scholar.