The Ethnological Society of London (ESL) was a learned society founded in 1843 as an offshoot of the Aborigines' Protection Society (APS). The meaning of ethnology 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 discussions of issues around what would now be classed as pioneering scientific anthropology 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 the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, merging back with the breakaway rival group the Anthropological Society of London.
Read more about Ethnological Society Of London: Background, Tensions in The Aborigines' Protection Society, Foundation, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, Split and Merger, Publications, Presidents
Famous quotes containing the words society and/or london:
“You cannot have one well-bred man without a whole society of such. They keep each other up to any high point. Especially women;Mit requires a great many cultivated women,—saloons of bright, elegant, reading women, accustomed to ease and refinement, to spectacles, pictures, sculpture, poetry, and to elegant society, in order that you have one Madame de Staël.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The earth is mankind’s ultimate haven, our blessed terra firma. When it trembles and gives way beneath our feet, it’s as though one of God’s cheques has bounced.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. quoted in: London Sunday Correspondent Magazine (Dec. 24, 1989)