A Useless Colonial Science?

Abstract

Physical anthropology is quite often presented as one of the favorite and most nefarious tools of colonial rule. Approved by science, racial categories shaped colonial segregationist practices, and reciprocally, colonial empires offered anthropologists new opportunities to survey differences among various people. Practices and discourses of physical anthropology thus directly and indirectly spread and deepened modern racism. There are obviously many links between colonial experiences and racism that need to be thoroughly explored. Building on the history of anthropology as well as on the impressive renewal of interest in colonial history for the last two or three decades, I focus on the cumulative anthropological situations created by investigations in physical anthropology in the French Empire from the 1880s till the 1950s to analyze their circumstances, the agendas in which they made sense, and their scientific and political results. Such investigations were indeed scarce, and beyond exceptional displays, such as universal and colonial fairs, anthropologists were at a loss to offer convincing support to colonial and metropolitan authorities. What, then, were the rationalities behind these quite demanding investigations? French physical anthropology tried to qualify as a colonial science in the 1910s and then in the 1940s, but with what results?

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