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Learn how people in the late nineteenth-century used race science, social Darwinism, and eugenics to justify their ideas about membership. Last Updated: November 6, 2017
Scholar David Jones describes the history of the eugenics movement in the United States. Scholar David Jones describes the history of the eugenics movement in the United States. By the late 1800s, more and more people were looking to science and biology to justify their ideas about who was “in” and who was “out.” They found support for their arguments in a work that seemed unrelated to human societies. In 1859, Charles Darwin, a British naturalist, published On the Origin of Species. It explained how various species of plants and animals physically change over time. Darwin’s work suggested that each species competes for a limited amount of space and nourishment, and only some survive. An individual organism that is well suited to its environment has the best chance of living long enough to mate and produce offspring. Over many generations, the traits that help an organism to survive are passed on, while the traits that create disadvantages die out. As a result, new traits, species, and forms of life gradually develop or evolve. Darwin called this process “natural selection.” Shortly after On the Origin of Species was published, it became a sensation. Many readers immediately saw connections between Darwin’s theory of evolution and their own society. A number of them were influenced by the writings of Herbert Spencer, a British thinker. Referring to Darwin’s work but using his own phrases such as “the struggle for existence” and “the survival of the fittest,” Spencer helped to popularize a theory known as Social Darwinism.
Go deeper into the history of eugenics in United States with our resource Race and Membership in American History. Go deeper into the history of eugenics in United States with our resource Race and Membership in American History. Social Darwinists saw their ideas at work everywhere in the world. People who were at the top of the social and economic pyramid were considered society’s fittest. People at the bottom must be “unfit,” they reasoned, because competition rewards “the strong.” Many Social Darwinists therefore questioned the wisdom of extending many rights and privileges, such as the right to vote, to groups who were “less fit.” They argued that if the laws of natural selection were allowed to function freely, everyone would find his or her rightful place in society. Increasingly, that place was based on race. In Germany, Ernst Haeckel, a biologist, popularized Social Darwinism by combining it with romantic ideas about the German Volk (the people who share German heritage, language, and culture). In a book called The Riddle of the Universe, he divided humankind into races and ranked each of them. In his view, “Aryans”—a mythical race from whom many northern Europeans believed they had descended—were at the top of the rankings and Jews and Africans were at the bottom. Haeckel was also taken with the idea of eugenics as a way of keeping the “German race” pure. Eugenics is the use of science to improve the human race, both by breeding “society's best with the best” and by preventing “society's worst” from breeding at all. Eugenicists believed that a nation is a biological community that must be protected from “threat,” which they often defined as mixing with other allegedly inferior “races.” The eugenics movement in Germany was founded by Alfred Ploetz, who advocated for “racial hygiene”—the effort to promote not only the health of individuals but that of the “German race” as a whole. Ploetz and Haeckel were inspired by the work of eugenicists in England and especially the United States. The term eugenics, which literally means “well born,” was coined in England by Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin, but many of the most prominent eugenicists were Americans. American eugenicists advocated restrictions on marriage and immigration in order to prevent races from mixing. They also lobbied for laws that would permit sterilizing the “socially unfit.” These American laws, passed in the 1920s, became models for similar laws enacted in Germany a decade later. Scientists who tried to show that there was no “pure” race were ignored. In the late 1800s, the German Anthropological Society, under the leadership of Rudolph Virchow, conducted a study to find out if there really were racial differences between Jewish and “Aryan” children. After studying nearly 7 million students, the society concluded that the two groups were more alike than they were different. Historian George Mosse says of the study:
Connection Questions
paperclip Students explore the long history of discrimination against Jews and come to understand how anti-Judaism was transformed into antisemitism in the nineteenth century.
paperclip Explore resources that meet the California History–Social Science Framework standards.
paperclip Explore resources that meet the Massachusetts History and Social Science Framework.
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The resources I’m getting from my colleagues through Facing History have been just invaluable. — Claudia Bautista, Santa Monica, Calif What were the causes of Social Darwinism?Social Darwinism was the product of late nineteenth-century economic and political expansion. As the European and American upper class sought to extend its economic and political power, it employed scientific explanations to justify the increasingly obvious gap between rich and poor.
Was Social Darwinism a cause of ww1?Social Darwinism was an intellectual movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that merged Charles Darwin's biological theory of evolution with theories about human economies and societies. Social Darwinism indirectly contributed to German militarism and World War I.
What was the impact of Social Darwinism?With Social Darwinism gaining popularity, inequality gained a strong foothold in the society driven by concepts of eugenics and racism. Around the 1900s, sizable populations around the world believed that the quality of human race should be improved by privileging the best human specimens (including themselves).
What is Social Darwinism and who created it?Social Darwinists held that the life of humans in society was a struggle for existence ruled by “survival of the fittest,” a phrase proposed by the British philosopher and scientist Herbert Spencer. Herbert Spencer. Key People: Herbert Spencer Thorstein Veblen Related Topics: sociology social change social evolution.
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