The Borders of Humanity: Linnaean Natural Historians and the Colonial Legacies of the Enlightenment
The Enlightenment concept of universal humanity continues to be celebrated in a number of recent academic texts. Its colonial origins and effects are however still frequently denied. The purpose of this project is therefore to examine the relationship between 'universal humanity' and eighteenth-century colonialism. We aim to explain how Enlightenment humanity accommodated universal aspirations alongside internal limitations that denied colonised peoples their full humanity. We will test the hypothesis that Enlightenment notions of humanity hinged on the emergence of a colonial ethnography originating in the amalgamation of Linnaean natural history with Scottish moral philosophical theories of stadial historical progress. By focusing on the 'borders of humanity' we will employ techniques of intellectual history to trace the definitional limits at the core of the concept of humanity. We will explore these limits in a selection of case studies of knowledge-formation and circulation in colonial engagements within Europe (Sápmi and Scottish Highlands) and with Creole and Indigenous peoples in Asia, America and Australia. Through its analysis and comparison of how the formation and circulation of ethnographic knowledge of humanity underpinned colonialism, the project will challenge the ahistorical disjunction posited between the assumed universalism of the eighteenth century and the overt imperialism of the nineteenth century.
Final report
The project has investigated the relationship between the concept of ‘universal humanity’ and colonialism during the Enlightenment. The central question we have posed in the project is: where did humanity begin and where did it end in the period c. 1760-1820? We made use of the metaphor of ‘borders’ to think about this question. The ‘borders of humanity’ was a frame of reference that allowed us to conceptualise the dynamism inherent in Enlightenment discourse in which humanity was construed as a domain with variable limits (including or excluding apes or ‘monsters’ for instance) and in which humanity was also internally differentiated by judgements about who was fully or not quite human (typically, peoples defined as ‘primitive’, ‘savage’ or ‘barbarous’). Our research has complicated the idea that humanity in the Enlightenment was a universal category by showing discussions of variability and its relation to the emergence of the concept of race in the second half of the Eighteenth century.
We studied the intellectual amalgamation between Linnaean natural history and Scottish stadial history (a developmental model in which societies were believed to progress in stages from savagery to civilization). This combination of intellectual orientations was of profound importance to the articulation of colonial ethnography throughout the late 18th and into the 19th century. We have researched how it was communicated to a wide range of students of medicine and natural history at the University of Edinburgh. We focused on how c. 15 of these former students then travelled and worked (as military and naval surgeons, colonial administrators and natural historians) extensively throughout Britain’s but also other world empires in the decades following, leaving a long trail of published and unpublished reflections on human diversity in colonial contexts. While some, such as Mungo Park (1771-1806) and his travels in Africa are well known, many others are less well known, such as the Pacific merchant and Australian colonist Alexander Berry (1781-1873), or the Caribbean military surgeon George Pinckard (1768-1835), and botanist Alexander Anderson (1748-1811). Others again, such as the Pacific traveler, Archibald Menzies (1754-1842) and Australian circumnavigator Robert Brown (1773-1858) are known primarily as botanists rather than ethnographers.
The project ran from April 2016-December 2019. Archival research took place in Scotland, England, Sweden and Australia. It followed the project plan closely. Due to a growing awareness of the importance of medical studies for the development of a Linnaean ethnography, we altered our plan to study archival research at the National Museum of Scotland and at the University’s Medical Society and the Royal College of Physicians. We also developed research on the significance of collecting for the curation and dissemination of humanity to students and the general public.
The project’s three most important results:
First, the project broke new ground by studying the translation and transformation of Linnaean natural history in Scotland by exploring its articulation within the teaching of natural history, moral philosophy and medicine at the University of Edinburgh. In addition to teaching his taxonomy, which we had expected, we discovered that teachers also emphasized Linnaean natural history as a model for colonial travelling, field observation and collecting. Our project has been the first to systematically study how Linnaean history was amalgamated with Scottish stadial theory.
Second, our research demonstrated how the study of medicine connected Enlightenment natural history and moral philosophy, and provided a foundation for colonial ethnography. Medicine was an applied science providing a mass of data for Enlightenment practitioners to enliven their speculations about human variety with empirical observation. Studying medicine involved exploring points of difference between ‘man’ and ‘animal’ through comparative anatomy, or discussing alleged human racial differences in relation to varieties of animals and plants. We accessed these medical speculations through lecture notes and the archive of student dissertations presented to the Royal Medical Society between 1770 and 1820. Our research has shown how closely connected speculation on race and variety were with the experience of colonisation in this period.
Third, our research has been among the first to illustrate the importance of global and colonial contexts of encounter in the intellectual history of Enlightenment thought. In contrast to previous studies relying heavily on canonical figures and texts, our project has shown how conceptual change involved a much wider range of actors, many of whom deployed and tested ideas in moments of encounter with non-European and Indigenous peoples. In doing so, they frequently accounted for human diversity by over-writing earlier stadial ideas of development of nations with emergent concepts emphasising physical differences between human populations. We have sought to incorporate Indigenous presence in our research by reflecting on the indelible imprints of cross-cultural encounter in this period of discursive change. We have not sought to speak for Indigenous peoples, but to pay heed to the splintering that occurs when you read against the grain of colonial texts, when contested meanings lodge under the skin and become irritations to colonial presumption. Such moments occurred for example, when ethnographers expressed disgust, or fear and were baffled by Indigenous laughter and generosity.
Our project contributes to the international frontline of research on the Enlightenment origins of racial thinking and colonisation. These are questions of great urgency inside and outside of academia around the world at this moment. Our work provides an historically informed perspective on the why Europe’s Enlightenment was entwined with colonization, how medicine and Linnaean natural history fed speculation on racial differences, and where the history of science can be broadened by studying cross-cultural encounter. We have sought to make our research on these questions accessible to a wide audience through and extensive range of scholarly presentations, publications and outreach activities.
New research Questions
Having first focused on humanity as a subject in University curricula and in natural-history travel, we developed new research on how human difference became a subject for curation and presentation in the University museum. In that sense, we address humanity as a subject for presenting knowledge also beyond the university. We discovered here an extensive interest in the bodily manifestation of alleged racial difference and widespread anatomical collecting. Two new and externally-funded projects have been generated on collecting: Andersson Burnett & Buchan, Collecting Humanity: Prehistory, Race and Instructions for ‘Scientific’ Travel 1750-1850 (funded by the Swedish Research Council) and Andersson Burnett Early Citizen Science: How the public used Linnaean instructions to collect the World c. 1750-1850 (funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation).
Dissemination of research
We have undertaken an active program presentations (22) and workshops (3) around the world to disseminate our findings. Papers have been presented at the following workshops and conferences: Bordering Humanity Workshop Paris, Global Natural History around 1800: Collections, Media, Actors at Göttingen, Svenska Historikermötet Växjö, The ISECS International Congress on the Enlightenment Edinburgh, Arctic Voices Conference Tromsö, Enlightenment, Nation-Building and The Practices of Natural History Uppsala, Mapping the Territory: Exploring People and Nature, 1700-1830 Bern University, Nordic Conference in Eighteenth-Century Studies Uppsala, Identity Formation, Nation and Knowledge-Transfer LNU, American Antiquities, Rostock University, The Institute for Advanced Studies Edinburgh University, Humanity on the Move, Brisbane, International Society for Intellectual History Conference, Brisbane, Thinking the Empire Whole, Macquarie University, and Eighteenth-Century Circulations of Indigenous and Lay Knowledge, LNU.
Workshops
Humanity on the Move: Race, Landscape and Humanity in the era of Colonisation and Enlightenment, Griffith University, November 7-8, 2019. The workshop brought together historians with specialisations in art history, colonial history, the history of medicine and science, and the history of economic ideas to consider how late Enlightenment perceptions of humanity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were framed by new forms of mobility.
Eighteenth-Century Circulations of Indigenous and Lay Knowledge in the Transatlantic World, Linnéuniversitetet, 12 Sep 2019. The workshop explored colonial encounters and collecting, and the role of intermediaries in such exchanges. The focus was thus on Indigenous peoples, collectors, laypersons, or churchmen: how they mediated the different nodes in their networks and how these came to life via letter writing, authoring manuscripts, curating of exhibitions, or the regulating principles of their archiving institutions.
Buchan, Andersson Burnett and Silvia Sebastiani, Bordering Humanity, Paris, March 2017. We brought together an interdisciplinary array of scholars who explored the conceptual, historical, the visual and geographical borders of humanity during the Enlightenment. This workshop laid the foundation for the Special Issue for The History of the Human Sciences.
Public event/talk:
Andersson Burnett & Buchan 310 år med Linné, Konsthallen Växjö 24/2 2018
Interviews
About the research project, Linnaeus views on human difference and views on the Linnaeus monument debate.
Andersson Burnett: Interview with Radio P4 Uppland, 18 June 2020, Interviewed by Smålandsposten, 18 June 2020. Interview with Radio P4 Kronoberg, 17 June 2020
Andersson Burnett & Buchan, Author Interview about our Special issue ‘Circuits of Colonial Knowledge’: https://www.histhum.com/circuits-of-colonial-knowledge/
Publications
The project has so far resulted in 13 published and 6 in-progress or forthcoming publications. We commenced with a book chapter on Linnaean natural history published by the Voltaire Foundation and Oxford University Press. Building on collaborations with scholars on our Advisory Panel and participants at our first workshop, we compiled a special issue for The History of the Human Sciences (October 2019). Our own article, ‘Knowing Savagery: Australia and the Anatomy of Race’, analyses and compares French and British depictions of Indigenous people in Australia in 1800 reflecting a crucial discursive shift in European thought from ideas of stadial progress toward a hierarchy of races. At the time of writing this report, it has been downloaded 582 times. We have also published 4 articles in international journals and 7 outreach articles. We have 6 texts that are either forthcoming, under review or consideration. The two most significant ones are: a jointly written monograph, Racing Humanity: The Colonial Ethnography of Scotland’s Enlightenment, the proposal and sample chapter for which are currently under review with Yale University Press, and the special issue Humanity on the Move in the Era of Enlightenment and Colonisation (Under consideration with Global Intellectual History).
A dedicated project website has been delayed due to Burnett changing employer. It has now been scheduled for August 2020.
We studied the intellectual amalgamation between Linnaean natural history and Scottish stadial history (a developmental model in which societies were believed to progress in stages from savagery to civilization). This combination of intellectual orientations was of profound importance to the articulation of colonial ethnography throughout the late 18th and into the 19th century. We have researched how it was communicated to a wide range of students of medicine and natural history at the University of Edinburgh. We focused on how c. 15 of these former students then travelled and worked (as military and naval surgeons, colonial administrators and natural historians) extensively throughout Britain’s but also other world empires in the decades following, leaving a long trail of published and unpublished reflections on human diversity in colonial contexts. While some, such as Mungo Park (1771-1806) and his travels in Africa are well known, many others are less well known, such as the Pacific merchant and Australian colonist Alexander Berry (1781-1873), or the Caribbean military surgeon George Pinckard (1768-1835), and botanist Alexander Anderson (1748-1811). Others again, such as the Pacific traveler, Archibald Menzies (1754-1842) and Australian circumnavigator Robert Brown (1773-1858) are known primarily as botanists rather than ethnographers.
The project ran from April 2016-December 2019. Archival research took place in Scotland, England, Sweden and Australia. It followed the project plan closely. Due to a growing awareness of the importance of medical studies for the development of a Linnaean ethnography, we altered our plan to study archival research at the National Museum of Scotland and at the University’s Medical Society and the Royal College of Physicians. We also developed research on the significance of collecting for the curation and dissemination of humanity to students and the general public.
The project’s three most important results:
First, the project broke new ground by studying the translation and transformation of Linnaean natural history in Scotland by exploring its articulation within the teaching of natural history, moral philosophy and medicine at the University of Edinburgh. In addition to teaching his taxonomy, which we had expected, we discovered that teachers also emphasized Linnaean natural history as a model for colonial travelling, field observation and collecting. Our project has been the first to systematically study how Linnaean history was amalgamated with Scottish stadial theory.
Second, our research demonstrated how the study of medicine connected Enlightenment natural history and moral philosophy, and provided a foundation for colonial ethnography. Medicine was an applied science providing a mass of data for Enlightenment practitioners to enliven their speculations about human variety with empirical observation. Studying medicine involved exploring points of difference between ‘man’ and ‘animal’ through comparative anatomy, or discussing alleged human racial differences in relation to varieties of animals and plants. We accessed these medical speculations through lecture notes and the archive of student dissertations presented to the Royal Medical Society between 1770 and 1820. Our research has shown how closely connected speculation on race and variety were with the experience of colonisation in this period.
Third, our research has been among the first to illustrate the importance of global and colonial contexts of encounter in the intellectual history of Enlightenment thought. In contrast to previous studies relying heavily on canonical figures and texts, our project has shown how conceptual change involved a much wider range of actors, many of whom deployed and tested ideas in moments of encounter with non-European and Indigenous peoples. In doing so, they frequently accounted for human diversity by over-writing earlier stadial ideas of development of nations with emergent concepts emphasising physical differences between human populations. We have sought to incorporate Indigenous presence in our research by reflecting on the indelible imprints of cross-cultural encounter in this period of discursive change. We have not sought to speak for Indigenous peoples, but to pay heed to the splintering that occurs when you read against the grain of colonial texts, when contested meanings lodge under the skin and become irritations to colonial presumption. Such moments occurred for example, when ethnographers expressed disgust, or fear and were baffled by Indigenous laughter and generosity.
Our project contributes to the international frontline of research on the Enlightenment origins of racial thinking and colonisation. These are questions of great urgency inside and outside of academia around the world at this moment. Our work provides an historically informed perspective on the why Europe’s Enlightenment was entwined with colonization, how medicine and Linnaean natural history fed speculation on racial differences, and where the history of science can be broadened by studying cross-cultural encounter. We have sought to make our research on these questions accessible to a wide audience through and extensive range of scholarly presentations, publications and outreach activities.
New research Questions
Having first focused on humanity as a subject in University curricula and in natural-history travel, we developed new research on how human difference became a subject for curation and presentation in the University museum. In that sense, we address humanity as a subject for presenting knowledge also beyond the university. We discovered here an extensive interest in the bodily manifestation of alleged racial difference and widespread anatomical collecting. Two new and externally-funded projects have been generated on collecting: Andersson Burnett & Buchan, Collecting Humanity: Prehistory, Race and Instructions for ‘Scientific’ Travel 1750-1850 (funded by the Swedish Research Council) and Andersson Burnett Early Citizen Science: How the public used Linnaean instructions to collect the World c. 1750-1850 (funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation).
Dissemination of research
We have undertaken an active program presentations (22) and workshops (3) around the world to disseminate our findings. Papers have been presented at the following workshops and conferences: Bordering Humanity Workshop Paris, Global Natural History around 1800: Collections, Media, Actors at Göttingen, Svenska Historikermötet Växjö, The ISECS International Congress on the Enlightenment Edinburgh, Arctic Voices Conference Tromsö, Enlightenment, Nation-Building and The Practices of Natural History Uppsala, Mapping the Territory: Exploring People and Nature, 1700-1830 Bern University, Nordic Conference in Eighteenth-Century Studies Uppsala, Identity Formation, Nation and Knowledge-Transfer LNU, American Antiquities, Rostock University, The Institute for Advanced Studies Edinburgh University, Humanity on the Move, Brisbane, International Society for Intellectual History Conference, Brisbane, Thinking the Empire Whole, Macquarie University, and Eighteenth-Century Circulations of Indigenous and Lay Knowledge, LNU.
Workshops
Humanity on the Move: Race, Landscape and Humanity in the era of Colonisation and Enlightenment, Griffith University, November 7-8, 2019. The workshop brought together historians with specialisations in art history, colonial history, the history of medicine and science, and the history of economic ideas to consider how late Enlightenment perceptions of humanity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were framed by new forms of mobility.
Eighteenth-Century Circulations of Indigenous and Lay Knowledge in the Transatlantic World, Linnéuniversitetet, 12 Sep 2019. The workshop explored colonial encounters and collecting, and the role of intermediaries in such exchanges. The focus was thus on Indigenous peoples, collectors, laypersons, or churchmen: how they mediated the different nodes in their networks and how these came to life via letter writing, authoring manuscripts, curating of exhibitions, or the regulating principles of their archiving institutions.
Buchan, Andersson Burnett and Silvia Sebastiani, Bordering Humanity, Paris, March 2017. We brought together an interdisciplinary array of scholars who explored the conceptual, historical, the visual and geographical borders of humanity during the Enlightenment. This workshop laid the foundation for the Special Issue for The History of the Human Sciences.
Public event/talk:
Andersson Burnett & Buchan 310 år med Linné, Konsthallen Växjö 24/2 2018
Interviews
About the research project, Linnaeus views on human difference and views on the Linnaeus monument debate.
Andersson Burnett: Interview with Radio P4 Uppland, 18 June 2020, Interviewed by Smålandsposten, 18 June 2020. Interview with Radio P4 Kronoberg, 17 June 2020
Andersson Burnett & Buchan, Author Interview about our Special issue ‘Circuits of Colonial Knowledge’: https://www.histhum.com/circuits-of-colonial-knowledge/
Publications
The project has so far resulted in 13 published and 6 in-progress or forthcoming publications. We commenced with a book chapter on Linnaean natural history published by the Voltaire Foundation and Oxford University Press. Building on collaborations with scholars on our Advisory Panel and participants at our first workshop, we compiled a special issue for The History of the Human Sciences (October 2019). Our own article, ‘Knowing Savagery: Australia and the Anatomy of Race’, analyses and compares French and British depictions of Indigenous people in Australia in 1800 reflecting a crucial discursive shift in European thought from ideas of stadial progress toward a hierarchy of races. At the time of writing this report, it has been downloaded 582 times. We have also published 4 articles in international journals and 7 outreach articles. We have 6 texts that are either forthcoming, under review or consideration. The two most significant ones are: a jointly written monograph, Racing Humanity: The Colonial Ethnography of Scotland’s Enlightenment, the proposal and sample chapter for which are currently under review with Yale University Press, and the special issue Humanity on the Move in the Era of Enlightenment and Colonisation (Under consideration with Global Intellectual History).
A dedicated project website has been delayed due to Burnett changing employer. It has now been scheduled for August 2020.