Ethnological Society of London - Background

Background

At the time of the Society's foundation, "ethnology" was a neologism. The Société Ethnologique de Paris was founded in 1839, and the Ethnological Society of New York was founded in 1842. An earlier Anthropological Society of London existed from 1837 to 1842; Luke Burke who was a member published an Ethnological Journal in 1848.

The Paris society was set up by William Frederic Edwards, with a definite research programme in mind. Edwards had been lecturing for a decade on the deficiency of considering the races as purely linguistic groups. The Oxford English Dictionary records the term "ethnology" used in English by James Cowles Prichard in 1842, in his Natural 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 by Noah's Flood, and the corresponding monogenism of human origins. Prichard was a major figure in looking at human variability from a diachronic angle, and argued for ethnology as such a study, aimed at resolving the question of human origins.

The early days of ethnology saw it in the position of a fringe science. Prichard commented in 1848 that the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) still classed ethnology as a subdivision of natural history, as applied to man. 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 including Roderick Murchison. The overlap of interests between the ESL and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) was reflected by common membership.

Around 1860 the discovery of human antiquity and the publication of the Origin of Species caused a fundamental change of perspective, with the older historical approach looking hopeless given the emergence of prehistory, but the biological issue gaining in interest.