TheEthnological Society of London (ESL) was alearned society founded in 1843 as an offshoot of theAborigines' Protection Society (APS). The meaning ofethnology as a discipline was not then fixed: approaches and attitudes to it changed over its lifetime, with the rise of a more scientific approach to human diversity. Over three decades the ESL had a chequered existence, with periods of low activity and a major schism contributing to a patchy continuity of its meetings and publications. It provided a forum for discussion of what would now be classed as pioneering scientificanthropology from the changing perspectives of the period, though also with wider geographical, archaeological and linguistic interests.
In 1871 the ESL became part of what now is theRoyal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, merging back with the breakaway rival group theAnthropological Society of London.
At the time of the Society's foundation, "ethnology" was a neologism. TheSociété Ethnologique de Paris was founded in 1839,[1] and theEthnological Society of New York was founded in 1842.[2] An earlierAnthropological Society of London existed from 1837 to 1842; Luke Burke who was a member published anEthnological Journal in 1848.[3]
The Paris society was set up byWilliam Frederic Edwards, with a definite research programme in mind.[4] Edwards had been lecturing for a decade on the deficiency of considering theraces as purely linguistic groups.[5] TheOxford English Dictionary records the term "ethnology" used in English byJames Cowles Prichard in 1842, in hisNatural History of Man, for the "history of nations". The approach to ethnology current at the time of the Society's founding relied on climate and social factors to explain human diversity; the debate was still framed byNoah's Flood, and the correspondingmonogenism of human origins.[6] Prichard was a major figure in looking athuman variability from a diachronic angle, and argued for ethnology as such a study, aimed at resolving the question of human origins.[7]
The early days of ethnology saw it in the position of afringe science.[8] Prichard commented in 1848 that theBritish Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) still classed ethnology as a subdivision ofnatural history, as applied toman.[9] It stayed in Section D for a period, but in 1851 it was classed in a new Section E for Geology and Geography, after lobbying by supporters includingRoderick Murchison.[10] The overlap of interests between the ESL and theRoyal Geographical Society (RGS) was reflected by common membership.[11]
Around 1860 thediscovery of human antiquity and the publication of theOrigin of Species caused a fundamental change of perspective, with the older historical approach looking hopeless given the emergence ofprehistory, but the biological issue gaining in interest.[12]
The Aborigines' Protection Society (APS) was set up as a result of parliamentary committee activity, and was largely the initiative ofThomas Fowell Buxton. It produced reports, but in the wake of theNiger expedition of 1841 some of its supporters believed a case made on science was being sidelined in the activities of the APS.[13] The APS was founded byQuakers in order to promote a specific social and political agenda. The Ethnological Society, though primarily a scientific organization, retained some of its predecessor's liberal outlook and activist bent.
An ethnological questionnaire was produced by the BAAS in 1841, arising from a committee led byThomas Hodgkin of the APS, and drawing on prior work in Paris by W. F. Edwards.[14] A prospectus for the Ethnological Society was issued in July 1842 byRichard King; King had been a student under Hodgkin atGuy's Hospital.[15] The Society first met in February 1843 at Hodgkin's house;[16] or on 31 January, whenErnst Dieffenbach read a paperOn the Study of Ethnology.[17]
Among the other founders wereJames Cowles Prichard,[18]John Beddoe[19] andJohn Brown.[20] Apart from Hodgkin, King and Dieffenbach, the other significant common member with the APS wasWilliam Aldam, another Quaker.[21] The Society had Corresponding Members, who counted as Fellows;[22] they later includedHermann Welcker.[23] In the early days the Society had rooms at 27 Sackville Street, which were rented through King to theWestminster Medical Society.[24]
John Briggs became a Fellow of the ESL in 1845, andBrian Houghton Hodgson, also representing the ethnology of India, was at some point made an Honorary Fellow.[25]William Augustus Miles was a member and published a paper on the aboriginal Australian culture.[26]
After Prichard's death in 1848, the intellectual leader in the Society becameRobert Gordon Latham. Links to the Aborigines' Protection Society were retained through the common membership of Hodgkin andHenry Christy, though the break was not completely amicable.[27] The Ethnological Society in its early years lacked good contacts with officialdom, certainly compared to the RGS and its good working relationship with theColonial Office. GovernorGeorge Grey was helpful to the Society, but he was an exception: it took until the end of the decade for the Society to begin to appreciate its marginal position with respect to the flow of information from the British colonies.[28] Grey was an active member of the ESL while abroad as a colonial administrator, and his network includedWilliam Ellis, another member.[29]
In 1850 the Society was based at 17Savile Row.[30] It saw a period of decline in the middle of the decade.[27] Among active members on the Council wasWilliam Devonshire Saull, who died in 1855.[31]George Bellas Greenough was a vice-president.[32] Richard Cull's 1852 report mentionedSingapore connections, in particularJames Richardson Logan.[33]
Thomas Richard Heywood Thomson delivered a paper in 1854 to the Society oninterfertility, casting doubt on comments ofPaweł Edmund Strzelecki aboutfemale infertility amongAboriginal Australians after they had given birth to a child with awhite father. The communication was well received, but as a contribution to the ongoing debate on race, was far from settling the significant underlying issue.[34]
James Hunt joined the ESL in 1854, and became a divisive figure because of his attacks on humanitarian attitudes of missionaries andabolitionists. He served as secretary from 1859 to 1862.[35] He found an ally inJohn Crawfurd, who had retired from service as colonial diplomat and administrator for theEast India Company. Crawfurd came to ethnology through its section in the BAAS. His published views on race were discordant with the Quaker and APS tradition in the ESL.[36] Hunt and Crawfurd in 1858 tried to dislodge the PresidentSir James Clark at an ESL meeting, unsuccessfully, while Hodgkin was out of the country.[37]
The 1860s saw a revived interest in ethnology, triggered by recent work, such as that involvingflint implements and theantiquity of man. The Ethnological Society became a more of meeting-place forarchaeologists, as its interests kept pace with new work;[38] and during this decade the Society became a very different institution.[39] The society's original members had mainly been military officers, civil servants, and members of the clergy, but by the early 1860s younger scientists had supplanted them. The background was of continuing encounters worldwide with many peoples;John Thomson the photographer who was recording them became a member in 1866.[40]Thomas Henry Huxley,Augustus Lane Fox,Edward Tylor,Henry Christy,John Lubbock, andAugustus Wollaston Franks all figured prominently in the society's affairs after 1860.
The ESL's meetings and journal served as a forum for sharing new ideas, and as a clearing-house for ethnological data. In 1868 the Society set up a Classification Committee to try to get on top of the issues caused by haphazard reporting, and lack of systematic fieldwork.[41] This initiative was a proposal of Lane Fox.[42]
In the years after the publication of theOrigin of Species in 1859, the "Ethnologicals" generally supportedCharles Darwin against his critics, and rejected the more extreme forms ofscientific racism. The movement towards Darwinism was not one way, however, as evidenced by the Honorary Fellowship given toRobert Knox in 1860.[43]
TheAnthropological Society of London (ASL) was founded in 1863 as an institutional home for those who disagreed with the Ethnological Society's politics (in terms of party loyalties, Stocking makes the political complexion of the ESL 75% Liberal to 25% Conservative, with the proportions reversed in the ASL).[44] On the topic ofrace, the Ethnological Society retained views descending fromJohann Friedrich Blumenbach, who had a five-race theory but was a monogenist, and from Prichard. The post-Darwin concept ofhuman speciation was unacceptable to those forming the Anthropological Society.[45]
The two societies co-existed warily for several years. TheX Club, with members in common, supported the Ethnological Society's side of the debate.[46] Both societies took an interest insexual morality as a topic, but the attitude ofsocial evolutionism was very largely restricted to the Ethnological Society, whereJohn Ferguson McLennan was a member, with the exception ofCharles Staniland Wake who made little impact at the time.[47][48] Huxley made efforts to merge the societies in 1866, but was blocked by Crawfurd; the attempt was renewed in 1868 after Crawfurd's death.[49] The Ethnological Society and Anthropological Society merged in 1871 into theAnthropological Institute. A small group of past supporters of Hunt broke away in 1873, forming a London Anthropological Society that lasted two years.[50]
Initially the Ethnological Society did not aim to publish its ownlearned journal. Instead it adopted a suggestion ofRobert Jameson, who edited theEdinburgh New Philosophical Journal, to have its transactions published there.[51] The early flow of published papers was in fact sparse.[52] Volume 46 from 1848 contained papers byGeorge Ruxton andJames Henry Skene contributed via the Ethnological Society.[53]
TheJournal of the Ethnological Society of London was published in the years 1848 to 1856, a period in which four volumes appeared, and the Society's scientific activities were less marginal.[52] It was edited byThomas Wright.[51] It then was published once more, under the titleTransactions of the Ethnological Society of London, from 1861 to 1869; it was renamed and published, from 1869 to 1870, again asJournal of the Ethnological Society of London,[54] and was edited byGeorge Busk.[55]
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