Article ID: CBB621428564

William Frédéric Edwards and the study of human races in France, from the Restoration to the July Monarchy (2020)

unapi

Scholars of the nineteenth-century race sciences have tended to identify the period from c.1820–c.1850 as a phase of transition from philologically to physically focused study. In France, the physiologist William Frédéric Edwards (1776–1842) is normally placed near the center of this transformation. A reconsideration of Edwards’ oeuvre in the context of his larger biography shows that it is impossible to see a clear-cut philological to physical “paradigm shift.” Although he has been remembered almost solely for his principle of the permanency of physical “types,” Edwards was also committed to what he recognized as the new science of “linguistique” and proposed a new branch of comparative philology based on pronunciation. Bearing Edwards’ attention to linguistics in mind, this article reconstructs his racial theories in their intellectual contexts and suggests that at a time of emergent disciplinary specialization, Edwards tried to hold discrete fields together and mold them into a new “natural history of man.”

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Authors & Contributors
Custred, Glynn
Krämer, Philipp
Furani, Khaled
Willet, Richard
Bach, Dominique
Rabault-Feuerhahn, Pascale
Concepts
Anthropology
Science and race
Linguistics; philology
Social sciences
Development of science; change in science
Science and politics
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
18th century
Modern
17th century
Places
France
United States
Germany
Great Britain
Switzerland
Belgium
Institutions
Organisation internationale de la francophonie
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