Was Charles Darwin a racist?

Introduction

Many historians have written about Charles Darwin (1809–1882) with a focus on his theory of evolution and its supposed conflict with religion. However, with the exception of Adrian Desmond and James Moore, not many historians have written about whether Darwin was a racist himself. Despite this scholarly neglect, my essay calls for a nuanced interpretation of Darwin’s stance on racism principally based on his accounts as a young naturalist on HMS Beagle (1831–1836). I will then proceed to argue that his abolitionist roots and time on the Beagle informed his accounts in the latter part of his life during the American Civil War (1861–1865) by which point he had published On the Origin of Species (1859).

Contrary to many of his contemporaries and predecessors, Darwin was not a racist because he did not believe that the different human races were distinct species that could necessarily be ranked. Firstly, I will argue that Darwin’s accounts on the Beagle and his experience with various tribespeople demonstrate that he was not a racist. I grant that young Darwin was not a racist because despite the cultural differences he observed in aboriginals, he maintained his doctrine of shared patronage. Secondly, I will argue that Darwin’s accounts during the American Civil War demonstrate that Darwin maintained his humanitarian ethos and remained a non-racist. This is because Darwin ardently objected to slavery in the southern US states as he did not espouse the widely held belief at the time that white Europeans were racially superior. In other words, Darwin did not believe that black Africans could be viewed as property to be bought or sold.

However, I contend that throughout his lifetime, Darwin believed in European cultural superiority. For example, during his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin described native Fuegians as ‘savages’ compared with Anglicised Fuegians and white Europeans. This experience was fundamental to his theory of evolution and gave credence to racist ideology. However, I maintain that unlike others at the time, Darwin recognised that the gulf between civilised Europeans and tribespeople was one of culture and circumstance, not race per se.

Background

Before I begin the substantive body of my essay, I would like to define my parameters. There is no denying that Darwin’s language in his Beagle diary and the Descent of Man (1871) would earn some disapproval today. So to avoid anachronism, the focus of this essay will be to ask whether Darwin, judged by the standards of his day, would have been considered a racist. What would I be looking for in a racist account? Racism at the time was the view that each major race had been separately created as distinct species (polygenism) that could be ranked (Gould, 1994, p65; Bowler, 2007, p294). The primary indicator of a historically racist account is one that insists that racial distinctions are intrinsic and fixed like the ones to follow. The Swiss-American biologist, Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), was convinced that God divided human beings into a number of species from the beginning and proposed that black people (‘negroes’) were ‘physiologically and anatomically distinct from whites’ (Browne, 2003. V2, p16). Further, Samuel George Morton’s study of skulls and Josiah Clark Nott and George Robbins Gliddon’s Types of Mankind (1854) justified black inferiority and gave quasi-scientific credence to the racial prejudices of the American south (ibid).

When investigating Darwin’s accounts, however, I have found no evidence to suggest that he held these radical views. In fact, the main tenet of Darwin’s theory of evolution is that in spite of the apparent differences among the races, all human beings have a ‘common progenitor’ and are, therefore, part of the same species (Darwin, 1871, p31). Now that I have defined my parameters, I will proceed with my first argument that Darwin as a young naturalist was not a racist.

Beagle Voyage

Firstly, let us consider Darwin’s direct experience with other races that were considered inferior in the nineteenth century: black Africans and indigenous tribes. I argue that Darwin did not view these races as inferior but attributed these differences to climate and culture. To support this point, I will make references to his interactions with the ‘Hottentots’ (today’s Khoikhoi), the Fuegians, the Patagonians and the Tahitians during his voyage on the HMS Beagle (date). An aside about the term ‘Hottentots’ is in order. Despite its derogatory roots (it’s Dutch for ‘stutterer’ due to their clicking language) (Desmond and Moore, 2009, p103), I follow the terminology of Hottentots to avoid confusion since Darwin referred to them as such.

‘When we know the Hottentot better, we shall despise him less’ (Keynes, 2001, p425)

In June 1836, Darwin would meet black Africans for the first time in their native land during a six-week trek across the plains (p174). Darwin described the Hottentot guide with whom he rode four days as ‘tame’, ‘domesticated’, not in the patronising sense, but to signal that this man had the same capacity for civilisation as a white man (p424). Before that, Darwin was hosted by an African-born lieutenant at a militia outpost in Cape Town. Darwin expressed that he had not met ‘a more obliging man this Negro’, which made it all ‘the more painful (…) that he would not sit down and eat’ with them due to the racial protocols that segregated blacks and whites (p174). Darwin’s view of these two men sat in marked contrast with the slanderous language normally attributed to the Hottentots at the time. Dr Andrew Smith (1797–872), who was considered an expert ethnologist in Cape Town, regarded the Hottentots as ‘deeply versed in deceit, and treacherous in the extreme’ (Desmond and Moore, 2009, p103). Moreover, The South African Quarterly used racial phrenology to advocate the ‘pessimistic portraits of the African character’ (p106).

On the one hand, the Boers tried to eradicate the Hottentots and resented the English for emancipating them because they viewed them as ‘patently inferior’. On the other hand, Darwin sided with the Hottentots, judging them as the ‘ill treated’ party while maintaining his belief in the unity of human races (Keynes, 2001, p424). I find Darwin’s notes here provide a convincing argument for the view that he was not a racist because despite the attempts by the Boers and the derogatory literature to dehumanise black Africans, Darwin did not hold this disparaging view of blacks. Further support for this claim comes from his experience with the Fuegians.

‘Nature, by making habit omnipotent, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate & productions of his country’ (Keynes, 2001, p224)

Between 1832–34, Darwin spent a month in Fuegian territory (Desmond and Moore, 2009, p95). In two accounts, Darwin affirmed that there was ‘no lower grade of man [that] could be found’ than the Fuegians and that they hardly looked like ‘earthly inhabitants’ (Keynes, 2001, p125, p134). This might seem like evidence to suggest that Darwin viewed the Fuegians as patently inferior like the Boers viewed the Hottentots, however, we must investigate further. Like Desmond and Moore (2001), I argue that Darwin was not grading the Fuegians like the phrenologists (p96). This is evidenced in Darwin’s assertion that despite their differences in appearance and habits, the Fuegians were ‘essentially the same’ as himself, ‘fellow creatures’ of the Christian God (Keynes, 2001, p222–3). Darwin compared the gulf between Europeans and the Fuegians to ‘wild and tame animal’ (p44), rather than on racial lines. Also, Darwin maintained that the notions of civilisation and domestication were tenuous since they could be altered according to circumstance. For example, his crew and he had had to become ‘fitted’ to the stormy and cold environment of Tierra del Fuego in the same way that the four abducted Fuegians who, in four years were radically transformed into virtual Europeans, had to acclimatise to their new environment (Desmond and Moore, p97).

Like Browne (2003), I argue that Darwin paid careful attention to the differences and to the similarities between civilised races (Europeans) and uncivilised races (the Fuegians et al.) during the voyage (V1, p249). For example, Darwin posited that the Fuegians had a shared ancestral relationship with Spaniards, noting that the Spanish words ‘canoa’, ‘canoe’ and ‘perro’ were shared by the Fuegian language (James, 1825, p173). Additionally, Darwin noted that the Fuegians’ had superior sensory organs to those of an Englishman, describing them as ‘highly perfected’ (Keynes, 2001, p137). However, Darwin was careful not to make sweeping generalisations about the Fuegians because he recognised that there were broader connecting features between these civilisations that could not be determined hastily. Unlike Morton, who was inclined to manipulate sample compositions of skulls to conform with his prejudicial views on intelligence differences among races (Weisberg, 2014, p166), Darwin understood that an effective naturalist could not form accurate impressions about a race of people with a single glance. Instead, Darwin emphasised that his readers could only form a ‘general idea’ regarding the Fuegians and that ‘further communications’ would be necessary to generate ‘just conclusions’ about their true nature (Weddell, 1825, p158).

Darwin’s experience with the Anglicised Fuegians cemented his belief in a unity of humanity while emphasising the cultural as opposed to racial superiority of the Europeans. This is best evidenced by Darwin’s interaction with one of the Anglicised Fuegians, Jemmy Button, before departing from Tierra del Fuego in February 1833. Darwin described Jemmy as ‘disconsolate’ at the thought of not returning to England because he perceived his compatriots as ‘bad men’ who ‘sabe (know) nothing’ (Keynes, 2001, p143). For Darwin, Jemmy’s remarks here signalled that he had attained the superior ‘habits’ of a civilised man, which left him disillusioned with the habitual (cultural) differences between him and his compatriots (ibid). However condescending Darwin’s remarks might appear to the modern reader, they do not constitute racism because he clearly believes that civilisation is not limited to white Europeans. The Anglicised Fuegians demonstrated to Darwin that a mere three years was ‘sufficient’ time (ibid) for the abducted Fuegians to become civilised because of the underlying humanity that unites us all under Darwin’s evolutionary paradigm.

Another race Darwin investigated were the Patagonians on whom he had many positive remarks. In January 1834, Darwin described the Patagonians as ‘impossible not to like’, ‘thoroughly good-humoured’ and possessing a great aptitude for languages (Spanish and English) which would greatly ‘contribute to their civilisation or demoralisation’ (p218, p221). Darwin described the Tahitians as the ‘finest men’ he ever saw, ‘very tall’, with ‘limbs well proportioned’, and self-deprecatingly affirmed that a white man ‘bathing alongside a Tahitian’ looked like ‘a plant bleached by the gardeners’ art’ next to one ‘growing in (…) open fields’ (p366). I find Darwin’s notes here provide a convincing argument for the view that he was not a racist because, unlike the phrenologists, he did not believe that these tribespeople had a limited capacity for technological and civilisational progress. While this suggests that Darwin upheld European values of progress and civilisation, it vindicates him of any accusation that he viewed tribespeople as being innately inferior because he positively espoused their capacity to become civilised and respected their positive attributes.

So, we have seen that Darwin’s interactions with the Hottentots, the Fuegians, the Patagonians and the Tahitians demonstrate that Darwin was a not racist. Now I will proceed with arguing that Darwin was not a racist because he ardently objected to slavery in the southern US states.

Slavery

I argue that Darwin objected to slavery because of his family upbringing and because he believed in a common ancestry. Darwin confided to his journal that he who fights against slavery is helping to alleviate ‘miseries perhaps even greater than he imagines’ (Keynes, 2001, p45). Now let us consider Darwin’s accounts at the time of the American Civil War. Darwin wished that the ‘[American] North would proclaim a crusade’ against slavery even at the expense of millions of lives because he felt these deaths would be ‘amply repaid in the cause of humanity’ (Darwin et al., 2001, V9, p163). Here, we see that Darwin invoked his doctrine of shared ancestry which he articulated in Origin and Descent by overtly representing the abolition of slavery as a cause that concerned all of humanity. Darwin’s diction had overtones of Christianity because his abolitionist stance was underpinned by his Christian upbringing.

To a great extent, Darwin was influenced by the anti-slavery literature promulgated by his family, particularly his sisters Caroline, Catherine, and Susan (Browne, V1, p245) and each of his grandfathers were unreserved abolitionists in the 1780s and 1790s (p196). Darwin’s family were accustomed to reading The Edinburgh Review which wholly condemned slavery as an ‘atrocious crime’ and called for ‘every Englishmen who loves his country [to] dedicate his whole life, and every faculty of his soul, to efface this foul stain from its character’ (Desmond and Moore, 2009, p15). Shrewsbury, which is the town in which Darwin spent 27 years of his life, donated to the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery (later known as the Anti-Slavery society) whose mantra was the ‘Universal Father [has] made of one blood all nations’ (p16). Darwin’s heritage and social milieu afforded him role models like Sir James Mackintosh, who viewed all races as ‘God’s creatures’ (p49). This left a lasting impression on Darwin and informed his views on his theory of evolution and his stance against slavery in the American South.

I would challenge Browne’s (2003) accusation that Darwin objected to slavery on merely sentimental grounds (p215). While I contend that it was relatively easy for Darwin to advocate the abolitionist movement in America given that he was situated in England, his abolitionist roots, his accounts on the Beagle and his theory of evolution suggest that he was not merely taking the virtuous high ground. Darwin genuinely abhorred slavery because he believed in the unity of humanity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have argued that Darwin was not a racist. By examining Darwin’s Beagle diary, we can see that Darwin did not hold disparaging views of native black Africans and indigenous tribes on racial lines. The differences that Darwin did observe were in his view cultural, not racial and subject to the environment, not skin colour. This was positively confirmed by the Anglicised Fuegians who in a short period were able to adopt traditionally European habits because the environment called for it. It is clear that Darwin saw the humanity in other races despite the derogatory literature that existed in the nineteenth century. As I have shown, Darwin expressed admiration of a black lieutenant, the Hottentots, the Patagonians and to a lesser extent the Fuegians because he believed in a common humanity. I have argued that unlike his contemporaries, Darwin did not believe black Africans and indigenous tribes were intrinsically inferior. Instead, Darwin believed that the shared ancestral relationships between the different races can only indicate that all races have a capacity for civilisational and technological progress. For this reason, Darwin abhorred slavery in the American South. It was not merely a product of British self-righteousness as suggested by Browne (2003), but a manifestation of Darwin’s humanitarian ethos that was cemented by his naturalist observations.

Word count: 2500

Bibliography

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