Overview
- Combines methods from history (particularly intellectual history and the history of science) with quantitative social science approaches
- Utilizes a large amount of primary and secondary research
- Explores an important topic – racial classifications within nineteenth- and early-twentieth century Europe – which has been relatively unexplored in historical writing
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Networks, Methods and Narratives
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book explores a vital but neglected chapter in the histories of nationalism, racism and science. It is the first comprehensive study of the transnational scientific community that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries attempted to classify Europe's biological races. Anthropological race classifiers produced parallel geographies, histories and hierarchies of European peoples that were crucial to the creation of national identities and to the overtly political race discourses of eugenics and popular racist ideologues. They lent nationalism the invaluable prestige of natural science, and traced the histories, conflicts and relationships of ‘national races’ back into prehistory. Racial national character stereotypes meanwhile supported competing political ideologies. The book examines the interplay between class, gender and national identity narratives and the tensions and interactions between the scientific and political agendas of classifiers. Within the elaborate transnational networks of scientific communities, for example, they had to reconcile competing national narratives.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Races of Europe
Book Subtitle: Construction of National Identities in the Social Sciences, 1839-1939
Authors: Richard McMahon
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31846-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-230-36319-9Published: 22 November 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-31846-6Published: 15 November 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVI, 466
Number of Illustrations: 36 b/w illustrations
Topics: Social History, European History, Ethnicity Studies, Historical Sociology