A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

Domination of Indigenous Peoples 843

old and run-down, such that “even the
paint on the building was made dirty.”
The competition for colonies also
coincided with the emergence of
pseudo-scientific studies that pur­
ported to prove the superiority of
Western peoples (through, for exam­
ple, measures of cranium size). Mate­
rial progress represented by
steamboats, railroads, and machine
guns was assumed to follow logically
from what was considered moral
superiority. Thus a French prime min­
ister insisted that “the superior races
have rights over the inferior races.”
Imperial territories became a testing
ground or laboratory for European
science and technology.

Social Darwinism

The British image of themselves in

Africa, from The Kipling Reader,

1908: “A Young man... walking

slowly at the head of his flocks, while

at his knee ran small naked cupids.”

In the eighteenth century, some of the

philosophes of the Enlightenment had

come to view cultural differences of

non-Western peoples with interest, believing that they could learn from peo­

ple who seemed in some ways different from themselves. In writing about

the “propensity to war, slaughter, and destruction, which has always depop­

ulated the face of the earth,” Voltaire had noted that “this rage has taken

much less possession of the minds of the people of India and China than of

ours.” Not all of the philosophes, to be sure, had been so enlightened in this

respect: David Hume wrote in 1742, “I am apt to suspect the negroes and in

general all the other species of men ... to be naturally inferior to the

whites.” Likewise, social Darwinists in the nineteenth century did not

believe that they could learn anything from non-Western peoples. Social

Darwinists argued that what they regarded as the natural superiority of

whites justified the conquest of the “backward” peoples of Africa and Asia.

They misapplied theories of biological evolution to the history of states, uti­

lizing the principle of “natural selection” developed by Charles Darwin, in

which the stronger prevail over the weak. Another British scientist, Herbert

Spencer (1820—1903), popularized these theories, uttering the chilling

phrase “survival of the fittest.” Nations, according to this view, must strug­

gle, like species, to survive. Success in the international battle for colonies

would develop and measure national mettle.

Cultural stereotypes of the peoples of the “mysterious” East or the “dark

continent” of Africa held sway. These ranged from “childlike” (and therefore