Impact Of Social Darwinism

In England in 1859, Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution titled “On the origin of species”, This theory was then taken one step further by a sociologist named Herbert Spencer. Spencer’s theory, titled Social Darwinism, stated that some races were superior to others based on the technology they had developed as well as the countries they had conquered. Social Darwinism further stated that the weaker races would die off as they were less sophisticated and couldn’t adapt to their surroundings. This lead to a hierarchy of races with the Europeans being at the top and the native peoples at the bottom. Social Darwinism became the justification for imperial conquest across the globe as it made the ill-treatment of other races acceptable

The declaration of Social Darwinism as a science increased its popularity tremendously as the 19th century was an era of rapidly accelerating scientific discoveries. Social Darwinism saw Samuel George Morton’s “Crania Americana” Published in 1931 and stated that the size of the racial groups skull was a direct link to the races intelligence and sophistication, Re-emerge into the world of science and was seen as a direct link of Social Darwinism. Sociologists and anthropologists felt it was necessary to educate the public about the indigenous and native people and thus human zoos were established. Human zoos were ethnological expositions in which the native people, generally people in a position in a position of authority and their family, were kept in captivity. The purposes of human zoos were to emphasize the differences between Europeans and the native people or non-Europeans. Thus the declaration of Social Darwinism as a science eliminated doubt of the accuracy of Spencer’s theory as society has long idealized science as a indisputable vehicle of the truth thus optimizing support of the Europeans as well as minimizing any doubt . Further contribution to the elimination of doubt was Social Darwinism’s link with Crania

Social Darwinism was published in 1859 yet slavery and colonization originated up to 400 years before thus imperialism was already established. Thus using Social Darwinism as justification would be illogical as imperialism has already been established for 400 years thus implying that the European society had already accepted Slavery as they were reaping huge economic benefits through the raw materials the colonies had to offer as well as the inexpensive domestic and manual labor work in addition to this “Crania Americana” was published in 1832 which is 24 years prior to the publishing of “on the origin of species” thus, even if one had to disregard the fact that imperialism had already been accepted, discrimination had already been established as well as a hierarchy of social and race classes. Therefore Social Darwinism had repeated “Crania Americana” just in other words thus discrediting Social Darwinism’s involvement in the justification for