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Dark Vanishings : Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800-1930 / Patrick Brantlinger.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2015]Copyright date: ©2015Description: 1 online resource (272 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780801438097
  • 9780801468681
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 306/.08
LOC classification:
  • GN380 .B73 2003eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: Aboriginal Matters -- 2. Pre-Darwinian Theories on the Extinction of Primitive Races -- 3. Vanishing Americans -- 4. Humanitarian Causes: Antislavery and Saving Aboriginals -- 5. The Irish Famine -- 6. The Dusk of the Dreamtime -- 7. Islands of Death and the Devil -- 8. Darwin and After -- 9. Conclusion: White Twilights -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index
Summary: Patrick Brantlinger here examines the commonly held nineteenth-century view that all "primitive" or "savage" races around the world were doomed sooner or later to extinction. Warlike propensities and presumed cannibalism were regarded as simultaneously noble and suicidal, accelerants of the downfall of other races after contact with white civilization. Brantlinger finds at the heart of this belief the stereotype of the self-exterminating savage, or the view that "savagery" is a sufficient explanation for the ultimate disappearance of "savages" from the grand theater of world history.Humanitarians, according to Brantlinger, saw the problem in the same terms of inevitability (or doom) as did scientists such as Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley as well as propagandists for empire such as Charles Wentworth Dilke and James Anthony Froude. Brantlinger analyzes the Irish Famine in the context of ideas and theories about primitive races in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. He shows that by the end of the nineteenth century, especially through the influence of the eugenics movement, extinction discourse was ironically applied to "the great white race" in various apocalyptic formulations. With the rise of fascism and Nazism, and with the gradual renewal of aboriginal populations in some parts of the world, by the 1930s the stereotypic idea of "fatal impact" began to unravel, as did also various more general forms of race-based thinking and of social Darwinism.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780801468681

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: Aboriginal Matters -- 2. Pre-Darwinian Theories on the Extinction of Primitive Races -- 3. Vanishing Americans -- 4. Humanitarian Causes: Antislavery and Saving Aboriginals -- 5. The Irish Famine -- 6. The Dusk of the Dreamtime -- 7. Islands of Death and the Devil -- 8. Darwin and After -- 9. Conclusion: White Twilights -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Patrick Brantlinger here examines the commonly held nineteenth-century view that all "primitive" or "savage" races around the world were doomed sooner or later to extinction. Warlike propensities and presumed cannibalism were regarded as simultaneously noble and suicidal, accelerants of the downfall of other races after contact with white civilization. Brantlinger finds at the heart of this belief the stereotype of the self-exterminating savage, or the view that "savagery" is a sufficient explanation for the ultimate disappearance of "savages" from the grand theater of world history.Humanitarians, according to Brantlinger, saw the problem in the same terms of inevitability (or doom) as did scientists such as Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley as well as propagandists for empire such as Charles Wentworth Dilke and James Anthony Froude. Brantlinger analyzes the Irish Famine in the context of ideas and theories about primitive races in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. He shows that by the end of the nineteenth century, especially through the influence of the eugenics movement, extinction discourse was ironically applied to "the great white race" in various apocalyptic formulations. With the rise of fascism and Nazism, and with the gradual renewal of aboriginal populations in some parts of the world, by the 1930s the stereotypic idea of "fatal impact" began to unravel, as did also various more general forms of race-based thinking and of social Darwinism.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Mrz 2022)