National Races: Transnational Power Struggles in the Sciences and Politics of Human Diversity, 1840-1945

400 Pages·2019·7.926 MB·English

by  Richard McMahon

National Races
Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology
Series Editors
Regna Darnell
Stephen O. Murray
National Races
Transnational Power Struggles in the Sciences
and Politics of Human Diversity, 1840–1 945
Edited by richard mcmahon
University of Nebraska Press
Lincoln
© 2019 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: McMahon, Richard (Richard Eoin), editor.
Title: National races: transnational power struggles in
the sciences and politics of human diversity, 1840– 1945 /
edited by Richard McMahon.
Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2019]
| Series: Critical studies in the history of anthropology |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2018047769
isbn 9781496205827 (cloth: alk. paper)
isbn 9781496215826 (epub)
isbn 9781496215833 (mobi)
isbn 9781496215840 (pdf)
Subjects: lcsh: Physical anthropology— History— 19th century.
| Physical anthropology— History— 20th century. | National
characteristics— History— 19th century. | National characteristics—
History— 20th century. | Race— Classification— History—
19th century. | Race— Classification— History— 20th century. |
Nationalism— History— 19th century. | Nationalism— History
— 20th century.
Classification: lcc gn62.8 .n37 2019 | ddc 599.9— dc23
lc record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2018047769
Set in Minion Pro by E. Cuddy.
Contents
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Series Editors’ Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Introduction: Political Identities and Transnational Science. . . 1
Richard McMahon
1. Transnational Network, Transnational Narratives: Scientific
Race Classifications and National Identities . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Richard McMahon
2. The Destiny of Races “Not Yet Called to Civilization”:
Giustiniano Nicolucci’s Critique of American Polygenism
and Defense of Liberal Racism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Maria Sophia Quine
3. A Matter of Place, Space, and People: Cracow
Anthropology, 1870– 1920 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Maria Rhode
4. Yet Another Greek Tragedy? Physical Anthropology
and the Construction of National Identity in the Late
Nineteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Ageliki Lefkaditou
5. Jews between Volk and Rasse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Amos Morris-R eich
6. Classifying Hybridity in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-
Century Russian Imperial Anthropology . . . . . . . . . . . .205
Marina Mogilner
7. Physical Anthropology in Colonial Korea: Science and
Colonial Order, 1916– 1940 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Arnaud Nanta
8. Racial Anthropology on the Eastern Front, 1912
to the mid- 1920s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Maciej Górny
9. Racial Politics as a Multiethnic Pavilion: Yugoslavs,
Dinarics, and the Search for a Synthetic Identity in
the 1920s and 1930s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Rory Yeomans
Conclusion: From National Races to National Genomes. . . . 339
Catherine Nash
Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .369
Figures
1. Map: Publications on race classification of
Europeans, 1872– 1918. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2. Map: German language publications on race classification
of Europeans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3. Map: National races in the late nineteenth century . . . . . . . 49
4. An opening page of Ivanovskii’s classificatory tables,
organized alphabetically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .228
5. Map from “The Differential Relations between
East Asian Races” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
6. Skull sketches from “The Differential Relations between
East Asian Races” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

Series Editors’ Introduction
Regna Darnell and Stephen O. Murray
Richard McMahon and his colleagues deploy the concept of “National
Races” to explore the discourses of racism, science, and national-
ity over the critical century leading up to the Second World War in
which these intersections emerged. The discipline of anthropology,
through various permutations of biological, cultural, and linguis-
tic classificatory frenzy, has both been implicated by and provided
authority for imperial exploitation and political control of mar-
ginal populations, both internal and external. McMahon argues that
anthropology holds a key role in understanding these relationships
because, more than any other discipline, it held the promise of a
“universal and supranational language of modernity.” When racial
types stand as proxies for national identity, the practices of science
and scientists are inextricable from the workings of political power
and its self- justification. In retrospect, the complexity and internal
variability of the racialist arguments used to justify political power
dynamics too often has been obscured by a simplistic linear narra-
tive of Nazi anti- Semitism and relegated to a past no longer mind-
ful of the persistence of the slippages of modern nation- states into
the comfortable smugness of “national races” in action.
The collective impact of the chapters transcends the expertise of
any single scholar, drawing on the widely diverse disciplinary and
national backgrounds of the contributors to move beyond conven-
tional narratives of the “core” players: France, Germany, and England.
Although most historical scholarship has taken the hegemony of
these powerful nations as a given, McMahon and colleagues argue