Difference Between Australia And Polygenism

In Kay Anderson and Colin Perrin’s paper, “How race became everything: Australia and polygenism” (Anderson 2008), they document a shift in our idea of the term ‘race’, that happened somewhere during the mid-eighteenth century, and that moved our thinking from a general Christian, monogenetic paradigm to a more scientifically backed polygenetic paradigm, due largely to the complexities surrounding the Aborigines of Australia, being ‘apparently unimproved’, and hence, ‘extremely savage’, they precipitated a crisis in existing ideas of what it meant to be human, and Polygenism attempted to account for those differing ideas.
The authors claim that before this shift happened, pre-18th century, mankind thought of race as being an environmental or
climatic issue, possibly even tribal or national, but that the differences where differences between men, and that all men were of one race, that which was from Adam and Eve, on through Noah.
Humanism characterized ‘the human’ by its “separation from and capacity to rise above nature”, by virtue of cultivation of the ground, and domestication of animals, and is attributed to the Bible’s injunction to subdue nature. Differences in how we fared at ‘subduing nature’ could be explained by how each people had adapted to its own particular environment, but was all considered to be on the same human scale, there was always the ‘underlying unity of man’. They saw race as people who were further ahead or behind rather than as being something different because of some innate difference or deficiency, but thought us all as one species. Men launched ‘Human Development’ and ‘Human Improvability’ efforts trying to ‘civilize’ the ‘savage’ Indians, but there were very few success stories. The article states that “Clearly the limited level of development among the American Indians caused some concern, and at the very least required further explanation”.
Turgot argued that there were some signs of transition to a pastoral stage in America, and that the eastern Algonkian Indians, and some Iroquois, where even using annual field re-allotment practices. But Adam Smith argued (Meek 1976, p. 124) that “a few stalks of corn” didn’t amount to agriculture, and there were other statements by Turgot and others addressing the concerns about the absence of animal domestication. But throughout these times these indigenous peoples were looked at as human, and were in hope of Human perfectibility, however that perfectibility was defined. A ‘relatively benign racism’, but a racism indeed.
Australia itself presented a general challenge to just about all European categories, its flora and fauna raising questions about the possibility, as Darwin put it, that ‘surely two distinct Creators must have been at work’ (cited in De Beer 1965, p. 107), but the Aborigine peoples challenged every prevailing categorizations and understandings of the human. They were found to be savage beyond comparison, having no domesticated animals, nor would they cultivate the ground, their huts “are not near so well built as those of beavers”, and their canoes, Cook claimed, were the “worst he had ever seen” (cited in Hawkesworth 1773, p. 210), even the Surgeon-General got into the mix saying they were “centuries behind” the modern man, of the late 17 early 18th centuries. But, as continued efforts to ‘civilize’ the Aborigines, and to encourage them to cultivate the land found them “utterly unimproved and hence ‘extremely savage’, who even had failed to have cultivated the land, came to be regarded as futile, their very capacity for improvement was brought into question. The authors talk of Governors Macquarie’s establishment called ‘Native Institution’ (Archdeacon Broughton, cited in Colonial Department 1836, p. 14) where after four years they failed to induce the Aborigines to give up their wondering, and hunting habits, and to become cultivators of the ground. The authors mention of “Macquarie’s failed attempts to ‘attach them to the soil’” rings of the tone of the 1952 pamphlet “Punching Out” by Martin Glaberman (Glaberman 1952) describing how the “worker is disciplined and tied to the machine” helping in the creation of a ‘hidden transcript’, that may have well helped in this discussion. These failed attempts to ‘civilize’ the Aborigines that initially perplexed the researchers eventually turned to outright dismay and consternation, and lead them in classifying the Aborigines as ‘extremely savage’, and finally as being permanently unredeemable. Their incapacity for improvement left the investigators wondering if they were human at all, eventually concluding they were not, it even went so far as to introduce thoughts of animalism as discussed in the “History of Racism” documentary (History 2007), and Louis Agassiz claiming there could be multiple distinct ‘centers of creation’, and people thinking there may be multiple races of ‘humans’. Thus, race was no longer regarded as a place in the developmental stage of humans, but rather as permanent and irremediable condition of each particular species.
Along with the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ came all kinds of new ideas, many of which played into this shift in thinking, some of the more influential to this discussion being the development of biology, the idea that the earth was much older than previously thought, the new geological time line, the total expansion of cultural contact throughout the world, the increase in knowledge of other peoples, and the exponentially improved precision in both historical and geographical information available in the world. The authors claim the Australian Aborigine ‘strained’ Prichard’s monogenism, that he was unable to account for the Aborigines, after all, he did admit to finding them a ‘miserable horde’. The new scientists working in areas such as craniology and phrenology were putting more and more doubt upon the monogenetic Christian ontology. With Prichard labeling the Aborigines as being ‘extremely savage’, and William Dampier saying they were “the miserablest People in the world”, and others claiming them to be the lowest link in nature’s chain. Biology but locked these characteristics in place as being an essential and immutable, permanent and irremediable conditions of race. Innatism was now thought to be the reason for these deficiencies and allowed them to separate humanity into distinct racial species, rather than into stages of development. The authors say that on many accounts, racial determinism was seen as a justification of colonial or even Imperialistic power, leading polygenism to become the prevailing scientific paradigm of the late 1700’s. These assessments were being reiterated over and over in the early colonial accounts. Throughout this, as the authors point out “It is in the evident struggle of the colonists to comprehend and to categorize a people who are here ‘represented’ as so extremely ‘savage’ that they are unique that, we suggest, such emphasis upon the Aborigines’ lack of cultivation may be interpreted as something other than the colonists’ anticipation of the ‘lawfulness’ of their appropriation of land that, precisely as uncultivated, could be considered as terra nullius”. These incomprehension in the face of the Australian Aborigine were extended to the entire human race by the late 19th century, helping to fuel the flames of the United States Civil War.
The authors describe repeated attempts that were made through the early nineteenth century to civilize and/or Christianize the Aborigines, and again to convince them to cultivate the land.
By this time the dominating view was that the Aborigines’ barbarism could not necessarily be ascribed to ‘any inconquerable dullness of intellect, but merely to their love of erratic liberty’ (Colonial Office 1844, p. 150). They would soon be giving up and letting the indigenous peoples be put on reservations where they could transition from hunter to cultivator on their own time. They claimed that “Aborigines were uniquely incapable of improvement in general, and of cultivation in particular”, yet “An ‘intelligent’ Aboriginal witness called before the committee was asked by the chairman: ‘Would any black fellows living about you now like to have a farm and to grow cabbages and other things?’ When told ‘they would not stop by it’, the witness was asked for clarification: ‘They like to walk about?’ To which the answer was ‘Yes’” (Colonial Department 1845, p. 4). But these innate deficiencies were ‘confirmed’ by 19th century phrenology and craniology, declaring the attempts to civilize the savage as futile, that their reflective faculties were deficient in many areas, Number, Constructiveness, Reflection, and Ideality being at the top of the list. By 1866 it was a world-wide fact that the savage hunters were irreclaimable, and a lost cause, as printed in the British-based Popular Magazine of
Anthropology of Gideon S Lang’s The Aborigines of Australia (Anonymous 1866, p. 50), and it’s from this time onward that the ‘dark races’ are no longer expected to change, and are even thought to be unable to change. Therefore “race became everything in that it came to constitute an argument for racial destiny”. With Knox and Hunt, polygenists; Nott and Gliddon, craniologists; and Samuel Morton and George Combe, phrenologists; Doctor Prichard had his hands full, but he surely gave it his all. Even while being attacked by Knox who “pitched explicitly against what he called ‘the laborious writings of Dr Prichard’” (1850, p. 23) the same arguments were still present, such as a lack of housing, no acquaintances with any species of grain, their failure to be affected by their coaching. The shift seems to have went well for all but the native peoples, and maybe Dr Prichard.