Introduction

Before Darwin published his Descent in 1871, Europeans and Americans had already started to explore the social and psychological implications of Darwinism. As a German enthusiast wrote: ‘from the first appearance of the Darwinian doctrine, every moderately logical thinker must have regarded man as similarly modifiable, and as the result of the mutability of species’. Though exaggerating the acceptance of Darwinism this statement accurately conveys the realisation by many intellectuals that this was a theory rich in implications for the study of human society. Within a quarter of a century of the appearance of the Origin there had emerged a literature devoted to exploring these implications in a wide range of contexts: social and psychological development, class, race and gender, religion and morality, war and peace, crime and destitution. Well before the label itself, Social Darwinism was established as a rich and versatile theoretical resource.

These pioneering examples of Social Darwinism are the focus of this and the next three chapters. The intention is not to provide a comprehensive account of the emergence of Social Darwinism, but rather to investigate the manner in which the world view was deployed in a variety of discursive contexts. This chapter deals with several very early examples which appeared in the 1860s and 1870s in Europe and the USA.

Brace and the evolution of racial harmony

A popular and persistent interpretation of Social Darwinism associates it with doctrines of racial hierarchy and conflict. It certainly was adapted for these purposes at an early stage. In Germany, for instance, a geologist, Friedrich Rolle, in a text published in 1866, emphasised the role of struggle and selection in human history and drew attention to the ‘struggle for space’ between races.