Historicizing Humans

Deep Time, Evolution, and Race in Nineteenth-Century British Sciences

In the mid-nineteenth century, new lights—Darwinism, prehistoric archaeology, encounters with the full diversity of the world's peoples—transformed understandings of human origins and development in ways that we are still reckoning with. The stimulating essays in this volume reveal the bewildering mixture of science, religion, racism, universalism, and sheer speculation displayed as new horizons opened up.
Peter Mandler, University of Cambridge

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With an Afterword by Theodore Koditschek

A number of important developments and discoveries across the British Empire’s imperial landscape during the nineteenth century invited new questions about human ancestry. The rise of secularism and scientific naturalism; new evidence, such as skeletal and archaeological remains; and European encounters with different people all over the world challenged the existing harmony between science and religion and threatened traditional biblical ideas about special creation and the timeline of human history. Advances in print culture and voyages of exploration also provided researchers with a wealth of material that contributed to their investigations into humanity’s past.

Historicizing Humans takes a critical approach to nineteenth-century human history, as the contributors consider how these histories were shaped by the colonial world, and for various scientific, religious, and sociopolitical purposes. This volume highlights the underlying questions and shared assumptions that emerged as various human developmental theories competed for dominance throughout the British Empire.

320 Pages, 6 x 9 in.

May, 2018

isbn : 9780822945291

about the editor

Efram Sera-Shriar

Efram Sera-Shriar is a Copenhagen-based historian and writer. He received his PhD from the University of Leeds and has worked in higher education and the museum sector for nearly twenty years. As an associate professor in English studies at the University of Copenhagen, he teaches about the history and culture of the English-speaking world. He is also associate director of research for the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies International at Durham University. Prior to taking on these roles, he was a senior researcher and research grants manager for the Science Museum Group in the UK and lecturer of modern history at Leeds Trinity University.

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Efram Sera-Shriar