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SOCIAL DARWINISM
Scientific Racism
What will we know?
• The ideological thought of prominent scientists in the 19th
and 20th centuries
• Comparing and contrasting other British/European
colonies with that of New Zealand.
• What possible predictions can we make about future
events/conflicts?
Darwin
• Scientist/Biologist
• Visited NZ on his famous Beagle Voyage. Described NZ;
he found the country unattractive. Its English inhabitants,
apart from the missionaries at Waimate, were ‘the very
refuse of society’, while Māori lacked the ‘charming
simplicity which is found in Tahiti’.
• The Ship’s captain, Robert FitzRoy later became a
Governor of New Zealand.
• Father of Evolution
• Fun fact: Philosopher David Hume in an attempt to refute
God, had basically come up with a theory to explain
worldly design years before hand.
So what exactly is Evolution?
The Formulation
• 1) More offspring are produced than can possibly survive.
• 2) Traits vary among individuals, leading to differential
rates of survival and reproduction.
• 3) Trait differences are heritable
Therefore
When members of a population die they are replaced by
the progeny of parents that were better adapted to survive
and reproduce in the environment in which natural
selection took place. This process creates and preserves
traits that are seemingly fitted for the functional roles they
perform.
Survival of the fittest
• What does this have anything to do with people?
• Social Darwinism suggests; a society that seeks to apply
biological concepts of Darwinism or of evolutionary theory
to sociology and politics, often with the assumption that
conflict between groups in society leads to social progress
as superior groups outcompete inferior ones.
• To some this was a scientific explanation for the disparity
in societies and a reason for cultural superiority.
Examples of Social Darwinism
Scientifically Speaking
• When Australia was colonised in 1788 (when was NZ?),
Aboriginals were described as less than human. They had
no perceived culture, language or prominent customs.
• Using the new found ideologies of Social Darwinism, they
were noted for being less evolved than Europeans and
thus inferior.
• Aborigines were hunted, purposefully poisoned, forcibly
separated and targeted as a race to be eradicated (See
Rabbit-Proof Fence).
• Up until 1970, Aboriginal children were taken from their
mothers and forced into missionary camps and white
homes.
Other Examples
• India Famine
• Shark Island
• Nazi Germany
• South African Apartheid
• Colonisation of America
• Colonisation of Latin America (Cuba, Haiti)
• Colonisation of The Caribbean
• 60000 RM
• 6000 RM; this is what this person suffering from hereditary defects
costs the Community of Germans during his lifetime. Fellow Citizen,
that is your money, too.
Tut-Tut
• These were not policies that were discussed at the dinner
table, they were gospel. You would find this in textbooks.
• All this brought to you by the same people who gave us
wholesome family ideals such as slavery.
• In India (1876) 10 million were left to starve by the British,
not because they had no supplies, but because the
famine was natures way of destroying that race.
Interfering was going against evolution and the natural
course of the world.
Questions to think about
• We will soon be watching a documentary on these
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atrocities. In the mean time…
What was British policy around the time New Zealand was
starting to become colonised?
How do you think Maori would be treated given these
ideologies?
What are the similarities and differences between Maori
and Australian Aboriginals?
What factors could alter the way Britain and Europe
approached New Zealand and Maori?