William Petty's Anthropology: Religion, Colonialism, and the Problem of Human Diversity (2011)
Lewis, Rhodri (Author)
Huntington Library Quarterly
Volume: 74
Pages: 261--288
Publication date: 2011
Language: English
In the late 1670s, William Petty wrote Of the Scale of Creatures, an unfinished treatise that reinterprets the scala naturae or chain of being. On the strength of its appendix on human anthropology, Petty has been identified as a founding father of modern racism. By reconsidering the history of the work's dissemination and examining the language and assumptions of the Scale as a whole, Rhodri Lewis challenges this reading. This essay shows that the Scale was virtually unknown until the twentieth century, and that it offers what was then a conventional geo-humoral explanation of human diversity, one quite distinct from modern racialism. It was motivated primarily by Petty's theological concerns and his desire to vindicate the scriptural account of the origins and demographic growth of humankind.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Michele Bonmassar;
(2019)
Diritto e razza. Gli italiani in Africa
Book
Reynaud Paligot, Carole;
(2006)
La république raciale: paradigme racial et idéologie républicaine, 1860--1930
Book
Paola Zagatti;
(2024)
Una scomoda eredità. L'africano negli studi antropologici fra Otto e Novecento
Book
Sonali Thakkar;
(2023)
The Reeducation of Race: Jewishness and the Politics of Antiracism in Postcolonial Thought
Book
Brantlinger, Patrick;
(2011)
Taming Cannibals: Race and the Victorians
Book
Beasley, Edward;
(2010)
The Victorian Reinvention of Race: New Racisms and the Problem of Grouping in the Human Sciences
Article
Jones, Ross.L;
Anderson, Warwick;
(2015)
Wandering Anatomists and Itinerant Anthropologists: The Antipodean Sciences of Race in Britain between the Wars
Book
Qureshi, Sadiah;
(2011)
Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Book
Fenneke Sysling;
(2016)
Racial Science and Human Diversity in Colonial Indonesia
Article
Lydia Janssen;
(2017)
In Search of the Origins of the Native Amaricans: The Story behind Grotius' De origine gentium Americanarum
Book
Livio Sansone;
(2022)
La Galassia Lombroso
Multimedia Object
Lachlan Summers;
Anderson, Mark;
(2020)
Mark D. Anderson, “From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology” (Stanford UP, 2019)
Article
Barany, Michael J.;
(2014)
Savage Numbers and the Evolution of Civilization in Victorian Prehistory
Article
Geus, Armin;
(2001)
Auf verschlungenen Pfaden ins Paradies. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der völkischen Anthropologie
Article
Cimino, Guido;
Foschi, Renato;
(2014)
Northerners Versus Southerners: Italian Anthropology and Psychology Faced with the “Southern Question”
Article
McMahon, Richard;
(2010)
Networks, Narratives and Territory in Anthropological Race Classification: Towards a More Comprehensive Historical Geography of Europe's Culture
Book
Keevak, Michael;
(2011)
Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking
Article
Ricardo Roque;
(2021)
The Logic of Skull Writing: Bone Inscriptions and the Science of Race
Article
Patterson, Andrea;
(2009)
Germs and Jim Crow: The Impact of Microbiology on Public Health Policies in Progressive Era American South
Book
Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt;
(2019)
Franz Boas: The Emergence of the Anthropologist
Be the first to comment!