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The Anthropological Society of London was founded in 1863 by Richard Francis Burton and Dr. James Hunt. It broke away from the existing Ethnological Society of London, founded in 1843, and defined itself in opposition to the older society. The Anthropological Society, Hunt proclaimed, would concern itself with the collection of facts and the identification of natural laws that explained the diversity of humankind. It would also cast its intellectual nets more broadly, dealing with the physical as well as the cultural aspects of humans. ==Polygenism versus monogenism== The real differences between the two societies ran much deeper. The members of the Ethnological Society were, on the whole, inclined to believe that humans were shaped by their environment; when Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution by natural selection, they supported it. They also believed in monogenism and tended to be politically liberal, especially on matters related to race. Hunt and his closest followers tended to be supporters of polygenism and sceptical of Darwin (though they made him an honorary fellow).〔 〕 They found the Ethnological Society's politics distasteful, and (for example) supported the Confederacy in the American Civil War. The issue that most sharply divided the two groups was the "Negro question." In his opening speech to the society he enunciated a strong racist view: Whatever may be the conclusion to which our scientific inquiries may lead us, we should always remember, that by whatever means the Negro, for instance, acquired his present physical, mental and moral character, whether he has risen from an ape or descended from a perfect man, we still know that the Races of Europe have now much in their mental and moral nature which the races of Africa have not got.〔 However he was careful to distance himself from the slave trade: A serious charge has been made against the American School of Anthropology, when it is affirmed that their interest in keeping up slavery induced the scientific men of that country to advocate a distinct origin for the human race...I would therefore express a hope that the objects of this Society will never be prostituted to such an object as the support of the slave trade, with all its abuses. He did this by redefining slavery such it did not occur in America:
According to noted Darwin biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore, however, founder James Hunt was a paid agent of the Confederate States of America, as was his friend Henry Hotze and two other council members. Their purpose in founding the society was "to swing London opinion during the (Civil ) war." Hunt and Hotze put pro-slavery pseudoscience into the Anthropological Society library, "bought journalists, printed and distributed thousands of pamphlets,... ran a propaganda weekly in Fleet Street, The Index..." and in general promoted the pro-slavery dogma that black people were a separate species and inherently capable of no higher development than that of enslavement.〔Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a hatred of slavery shaped Darwin's views on human evolution, A Desmond and J Moore, 2009 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston/NYC; quotes from p. 332-3〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Anthropological Society of London」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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