Racial fears in the Edwardian Era

Résumé du document

To use the title of George Bernard Shaw's play, in order to improve a so-called race, human beings should get rid of those who endanger the proper development of human species from "man" to "superman". Proponents of this theory forgot, however, that human beings and animals have an inherent and enormous difference. While the former are gifted with self-awareness, the latter are not. This difference renders the subject of racial improvement through human intervention ethically controversial. While a bird can throw a young out of the nest, can a mother put an unfit child in a bin? What must be done about the unfit who are already adults and able to give birth in their turn? All these questions were raised by the first eugenicists of England. Through different texts from eugenicists, politicians or journalists, we will try to understand what the basis of eugenics was and to what extent it intended to change people's minds and habits at the very beginning of the twentieth century. The question is not whether it is a good thing or not but to understand how fears of racial impurity fears emerged in the mind of people and how they wanted to cope with it.

Extraits

[...] Science was then the only protection and answer to be found at a point when religion was no longer useful. In the same way, the strong interest in woman's right and environment can be seen as a result of the deep shifts that affect Britain at this milestone of its history, represented by the beginning of the twentieth century. Industrialisation, urbanisation, science and their side results such as poverty, diseases, pollution could but provoke fear in the mind of the nation. [...]

[...] The question of the emancipation of women raises a huge amount of collateral questionings: everything concerning women “require careful collection of facts, and the interpretation of such facts by scientific and impartial minds.” Pearson wonders what impact the emancipation of woman will have on race and society. Woman is not considered as the equal of man but as a curious animal which has to be examined before to be qualified of dangerous or not. However, he does not question the usefulness of woman in society. [...]

[...] Havelock Ellis, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells., for example, were feminists. Elisabeth Hastings, in the article mentioned above, uses these men's words in order to emphasize her own argumentation. She starts with the idea that “with the degradation of the mother comes the neglect of the child”. This statement must have a strong impact as it deals with the well-being of children. The conditions in which woman are brought up are not good enough to provide then with the capacity of being good mothers. [...]

[...] Auguste Forel believes that sexuality must not be regarded as immoral if its aim is not always reproduction. Indeed, he explains that sexual desire is “ethically positive if it is of benefit to individuals, to society, and especially to the race.” What is to be taken into account is the well-being of people: as has no breeding season”, the number of birth should exceed the “habitable space upon earth”. Therefore, contraception is necessary and moral as “everything is moral which makes for the happiness and well-being of society. [...]

[...] Conclusion To conclude, there is no doubt that racial fears at the end of nineteenth and beginning of twentieth century were due to a lose of prestige of the British Empire. The nation was having more and more difficulties to remain competitive in front of the rise of Germany and the United States. If Britain could maintain some power over its colonies, the rebellions of India and, inside Great Britain itself, of Irish nationalists, revealed the slow decline of the Empire. [...]