“Race Science” in a Changing
World
Looking to Science
 In this new modern world, people looked to
science to justify their ideas about who was
“in” and who was “out”
 First scientists to respond were American,
not European
 1800’s a white surgeon from Philadelphia,
Samuel Morton, hypothesized that there was
a link between brain size and race.
Looking to Science
 Also added the idea that each race is fixed,
different from each other, and incapable of
being changed.
Paul Broca
 From France and built on Morton’s work
 Believed only “compatible” races would
produce fertile or what he called “eugensic
offspring”
 Warned against race mixing
 Had powerful effects when governments
applied them to everyday life.
Charles Darwin
 1859, Charles Darwin, a British biologist
published The Origin of the Species.

Each species competes for space and
nourishment to survive and only the strong
survive to reproduce themselves
 Herbert Spencer, a British writer, applieced
Darwin’s ideas to society

Social Darwinism
Ernst Haeckel
 German biologist
 Divided humankind into races and ranked
them
 Taken with the idea of Eugenics- breeding
“societies best with best” as a way of
keeping the “German race” pure.
Francis Galton
 Cousin of Charles Darwin
 In 1883, he coined the term racial hygiene or
eugenics

the strategy aimed at improving the genetic
qualities of a population through controlled
reproduction
Citizenship and European Jews
 The tightening link between nationalism and
race in the late 1800’s had a profound effect
of the way European Jews defined their
identity.
 Before, Jews who converted were no longer
outsiders
Citizenship and European Jews
 Racists turned the “Jewish problem” into a
permanent problem
 Neither assimilation or conversion to
Christianity altered one’s race
 Jews were now a separate, evil, and inferior
race.