Despite these inXuences, Wilson would not become an explicit phrenologist.
Yet, if the rejection of phrenology by academia grew throughout the century,
the parallel development of craniology took the opposite direction. There was
a certain overlap between the two for both claimed the possibility of making
inferences of personal traits and intelligence. Craniology came to be deWned
as the science which studied skulls, measuring the brain to quantify sexual
and racial diVerences in intelligence. Measurements of the skull were being
undertaken probably in the 1830s by the anatomist and Professor of Physi-
ology at the University of Copenhagen, Daniel Friederich Eschricht (1798–
1863), who has been described as a craniologist. He quantiWed the dimension
of skulls unearthed in barrows to test whether there were signiWcant diVer-
ences between the three ages developed years earlier by Thomsen (Chapter 11)
(Morse 1999: 2). The work of another Scandinavian scholar, the Swedish
Professor of Anatomy in Stockholm, Anders Retzius (1796–1860), was of key
importance for craniology. In his critique to phrenology, he developed the
cephalic index in 1845. With this index the very inXuential distinction
between dolichocephalic (long skulls) and brachycephalic (wide skulls) type
was created. Its signiWcance became understood in racial terms, for dolicho-
cephalic people were identiWed with the Scandinavians, the Germans, the
English and the French (at least those from Northern France), who were
considered intelligent as opposed to the more retarded brachycephalic types
represented by peoples such as the Lapps, the Finns or Finno-Slavs and the
Bretons (Poliakov 1996 (1971): 264).
Racism became entangled with the debate between monogenists and poly-
genists. Blumenbach had been a monogenist, a term that, as mentioned on
page 312, was used for those who believed that all human races derived from a
common origin. Blumenbach was not an exception as monogenism was the
prevailing belief held during the eighteenth century. This, however, changed
in the following century. Monogenism was still maintained in theResearches
into the Physical History of Man(1813) published by the then young James
Cowles Prichard (1786–1848). 2 Soon, however, the balance would change
towards polygenism. From a generalized belief in human progress, signs of
a more intolerant form of racism emerged in the mid nineteenth century.
Boundaries between races became unbreakable and change became diYcult if
not impossible. Racism became directed towards the ‘Other’ beyond one’s
frontiers and especially beyond Europe as discussed in Chapter 10, as well as
towards aliens inside, which meant towards minorities such as the Jews
2 In a later edition (1841) he quoted Eschricht’s work (Morse 1999: 3), and through this
example and others it becomes clear that the acceptance of the Three Age system in Britain
became linked with craniology, at least until the appearance of Lubbock’sPrehistoric Timesin
1865.
Liberal Revolutions (c. 1820–1860) 347