European Concepts of the Non-European

Albinism

a biological condition that fascinated the eighteenth-century intellectuals because it seemed to them to prove that white was the original color of Adam and Eve.

Anthropological Perspective

comparative point of view that there are physical and cultural differences among human populations which must be taken into account in any attempt to generalize about humanity (Rowe, p. 61 = Darnell, ch. 5).

Artificial variation

antithesis of natural variation. The two types were confused in early modern Europe. Some believed that negroid features had been artificially derived, meaning man-made after birth by molding the head or facial features. Others argued that the variety of characteristics occurred naturally. The pygmies ultimately turned out to be true, whereas Negro nose-flattening ultimately proved to be fictitious and a rationalization for aesthetic prejudices.

Axioms

self-evident truth; a universally accepted principle or rule. In logic and mathematics an axiom is a proposition that is assumed without proof for the sake of studying the consequences that follow from it.

Bipedism

two-footed animal. This quality was much discussed in the eighteenth century because it was seen as an advantage to the human species.

Blumenbach

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), author of the popular On the Natural Varieties of Mankind (1775), is traditionally regarded as the "father of physical anthropology."

Buffon

Count de Buffon (1707-1788) claimed to have found a synthesizing principle at work in the living world, analagous to Newton's synthesis in physics, in his popular 1749 essay entitled "Of the Varieties in the Human Species." The underlying law at work in nature was climate.

Cannibalism

= anthropophagite; a human being that eats human flesh. "Cannibalism always turns out to have been suppressed shortly before the observer's arrival, or is imputed by his informants to other people," Bitterli, p. 9.

Cartesianism

of or pertaining to Descartes's mathematical methods or philosophy; deductive reasoning where a conclusion is drawn from a set of premises containing no more information than the premises taken collectively. The conclusion is logically true. Deductive reasoning is the antithesis to inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is where the truth of the conclusion is verifiable only in terms of future experience and certainty is attainable only if all possible instances have been examined.

Caucasian

term invented by Blumenbach based on the [European] idea that the most beautiful race lives around Mount Caucasus and that humanity's progenitors (meaning their forefathers and their original model) descended from Noah's Ark settling on Mount Ararat, the southern slope of Mount Caucasus.

Chain of Being

ancient concept or world-order of the great Scale of Nature. The world is structured in terms of an immense number of links arranged in hierarchical order (gradation), going from the lowest through every possible grade to the highest (plenitude), each grade differing by the least possible difference (continuity). Alexander Pope coined the phrase "chain of being" in his poem, "Essay on Man" (1732-4). Arthur O. Lovejoy, author of The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (1936), considers evolution to be but a "temporalizing of the Chain of Being." Nineteenth-century evolutionists switched the European perspective from the angel-to-ape gradation to one of the ape-to-humanity instead (with a gradation of races inside humanity).

Chimpanzee

= "Man of the Woods" in an African language.

Chinoiserie

conceptualized by Baudet, without using this term, as a wave of enthusiasm and uncritical imitation of China and things Chinese - or perceived to be Chinese - that swept across Europe (Baudet, pp. 43-44).

Climatic theory

ancient theory that the differences of skin color among human populations is due to the differences of climate. This theory found new favor in the eighteenth century thanks to the Baron de Montesquieu and the Count de Buffon.

The Contact

1492.

Degeneration

declination in qualities of human skin, size, and mentality from the ancestral racial "norm." According to Buffon, the laws of degeneracy operated from the Temperate Zone to the Torrid or Frigid Zones and in the East-West direction as well.

Endogamy

marriage within a specific social unit.

The Enlightenment

philosophical movement of the 18th century in Europe, characterized by a lively questioning of authority, keen interest in matters of politics and general culture, and an emphasis on empirical method in science.

Ethnocentrism

tendency to view alien groups or cultures in terms of one's own.

�trangisme

= xenophilia; superiority of all things foreign (Baudet, pp. 49-50).

Eurocentrism

tendency to view non-European groups or cultures in European terms, with the assumption that Europe's are superior.

Evolution

to unroll, unfold, open; development; to come forth gradually into being; to go to a more highly organized state or condition.

Exogamy

marriage outside a specific social unit.

Exoticismm

not native, strikingly foreign; discussed by Baudet as characteristic of the Enlightenment; the improper generally held an inordinate fascination for the 18th century; a modus vivendi or temporary arrangement of living between the degenerative view of life "no longer" and the evolutionist view of life "not yet" (Baudet, pp. 37-38 and 51).

Frigid Zone

the coldest zone of the globe and harshest conditions, consequently home to the most degenerative varieties of the human species.

Historical Point of View

recognition of cultural contrasts between the present and the past (Rowe, p. 69).

Homo sylvestris

= wild man.

Jocko

small orang-outang, according to Buffon.

Latitude

position on the north-south coordinate.

Longitude

position on the east-west coordinate, only made possible in the eighteenth century with the invention of chronometers.

Metamorphosis

change from one form into another, e.g. the Frog-Apollo metamorphosis as illustrated in Lavater's Physiognomy (1778-79). This concept fascinated Enlightenment scientists because it illustrated the unity in diversity that characterized living nature. Petrus Camper (1722-1789) illustrated metamorphoses in nature.

Millennialism

a future reign of righteousness; for example, a future reign by Christ.

Monogenism

theory or doctrine that all human races have descended from a single created pair, or from a common ancestral type; antithesis of polygenism.

"Morals and Manners"

eighteenth-century expression for today's concept of "culture" in the anthropological sense.

Natural inequality

antithesis of artificial or social inequality pointed out by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth century.

Negrophobia

unreasonable hatred of the "Negro" (African or African-American) race.

Noble Savage

eighteenth-century literary device to criticize society or l'infâme (Voltaire's term for Christianity); a literary device for Natural Reason in the Enlightenment.

Orang-outang

"Man of the Woods," in the Malay language.

Orientalism

conceptualized by Baudet, without using this term, as a preeminently sympathetic view of Turks, Persians, and other non-Westerners other than the Chinese, Africans, or American Indians (Baudet, pp. 45-48).

Perspective Distance

sensitivity to and acknowledgment of cultural differences through time (history) or space (anthropology) which permits the culture to be respectively observed on its own terms (Rowe, p. 76).

Polished society

the civil state, i.e. European civilization; the antithesis of "rude nation" or the "savage state."

Polygenism

theory or doctrine that existing human races have evolved from two or more distinct ancestral types; polygeny; antithesis of monogenism. Some polygenists of the 18th century were Voltaire and David Hume. All the European scientists of the 19th century were polygenists.

Pongo

large orang-outang, according to Buffon.

Preconceptions

natural tendency of travellers to see only what they are prepared to see; psychological urge to see only what one wants to see; intellectual anxiety to interpret the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar; pre-judgments; prejudices; rationalizations.

Primitive

originally meant the initial, primary level.

Primitivism

= "no longer;" degenerative; the belief that primitive or chronologically early civilizations are qualitatively superior to contemporary civilization (Baudet, p. 34).

Race

a category of humans, conceptualized in the eighteenth century and reified in the nineteenth century. Carolus Linnaeus, the great Swedish nomenclator of the 18th century, classified four races based on the ancient theory of the four humors. Blumenbach classified five races. The number and identification of races which each anthropologist classified varied enormously between them.

Racism

defined broadly as stigmatization of those we perceive as different from us; defined specifically as the doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior. There can be an ethnocentric group of people without being a racist group of people because racism seems to need to have some systematized body of scientific knowledge. Racist expressions generally seek to justify and thus perpetuate sets of mind or social practices already in existence.

Skepticism

questioning the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual; a doubting attitude; even doubting the possibility of real knowledge of any kind.

Species

the biological group in which the individuals can produce fertile offspring together.

Temperate Zone

the best zone on the globe in terms of environmental condidtions, which included Europe, and was the site of humanity's origin because the temperate climate favored Nature's optimal generative power.

Torrid Zone

the hottest climate on the globe and therefore home, it was assumed, to the world's darkest-skinned peoples.

Utopianism

= "not yet; "evolutionist; place or state of political or social perfection; any visionary system of political or social perfection; imaginary political or social perfection (Baudet, p. 34).

Wild children

abandoned children of Europe found in the wild.

Wild man

homo sylvestris in Latin.

Xenophilia

= étrangisme ; superiority of all things foreign (Baudet, pp. 49-50).

Xenophobia

unreasonable hatred or fear of foreigners.

Baudet, Henri.

Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man. Trans. Elizabeth Wentholt. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1988.

Bitterli, Urs.

Cultures in Conflict: Encounters Between European and Non-European Cultures, 1492-1800. Trans. Ritchie Robertson. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.

Darnell, Regna, ed.

Readings in the History of Anthropology. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.

Rowe, John Howland.

"The Renaissance Foundations of Anthropology." Readings in the History of Anthropology, ed., Regna Darnell (New York: Harper and Row, 1974): 61-77.

Schiebinger, Londa.

Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Beacon Press, 1993): Chapter 5.

Woodrow, Ross.

Digital Lavater. Digital edition of Lavater's Physiognomy (in English translation). University of Newcastle.

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Miriam Claude Meijer, Ph.D.
04/08/06