Gabriel Lambert British 6 – Race and National Identity

To what extent did ideas of race inform the construction of national identity in Britain in the 19th
century?

Take up the White Man's burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.1

But no amount of beauty or refinement could have made an entanglement between Good and
herself [a local Kukuana woman from a fictitious African tribe] a desirable occurrence; for, as she
herself put it ‘Can the sun mate with the darkness, or the white with the black?’ 2

These extracts from The White Man’s Burden and King Solomon’s Mines neatly capture one of the
key divisions within the discourse of race. While Kipling suggests that the ‘new-caught, sullen
peoples’ are ‘half-child’, ready to be introduced and educated in the ways of civilization by the white
man, Haggard implies the incompatibility of the two races – indeed even with ‘refinement’ such an
‘entanglement’ would never be desirable. These contrasting perspectives on race, one retaining the
humanistic impulses from the abolition of slavery with its paternalistic concern to remove the
‘savage’ from squalor and the other justifying its theory of racial incompatibility with ‘scientific’
anthropological data were a key part of both Victorian and Edwardian racial discourse. But they also
hint at the sheer complexity of trying to pin down a link between race and national identity – if there
was fundamental disagreement about the very meaning of racial difference, how could a unitary,
universal national identity be constructed that incorporated ideas on race? The plurality of racial
theories surely suggests one must talk of nationalities. Moreover, the issue is made more
problematical when one tries to pin down any form of ‘British’ identity – some theorists were
dismissive of the ‘Celtic’ Welsh, Scottish and Irish and preferred to construct an idealised Anglo-
Saxon racial type while others found the whole concept of ‘nationalism’ to be an atavistic one,
beneath Britain’s status as an imperial power. Not only was the popular feeling aroused by
nationalism an indication of an inferior ‘race’ but any idea of a single ‘nation’ was dangerously close
to radical democracy. All of these issues reflect tensions that were felt just as keenly in Victorian
Britain, tensions that should be drawn out rather than generalised about since ideas about both race
and nationalism were discourses rather than concrete ideas, constantly being redefined according to
the contemporary events. The historian has a further trap to avoid. One should not replace the
biological determinism of the 19th century with an equally oppressive cultural, historical,
physiological or linguistic determinism – a failure to address change over time leaves one with long-
term continuities deeply rooted in psychology and culture that were (and presumably are)
impervious to change.

It is fairly straightforward to point to some fairly consistent ideas in most 19th century racial
theories: the idea that humans were divisible into races with fixed characteristics that defied
modification by external circumstances; that intellectual and moral capacities were unevenly spread
within races; and that mental endowments were bound with physical racial traits that displayed a
degree of consistency within a racial group. 3 But it is more important to illustrate the sheer plurality

1
The White Man’s Burden, Rudyard Kipling, 1899, was urging America to ‘take up the White Man’s burden’ in
the Phillipines after Spanish-American war.
2
Haggard, H. R, King Solomon’s Mines Penguin Popular Classics 1994, p279
3
ed. H.E. Augstein Race: the Origins of an Idea (1996), x
Gabriel Lambert British 6 – Race and National Identity

of racial ideas (or ideas dismissing race as a useful taxonomic concept) and their change over time.
For instance, up to around 1840 the popular culture surrounding racial difference was linked with
the abolitionist movement and the evangelical element stressed the commonality of human decent
in the theory of monogenesis based on a literal reading of the Old Testament. 4 This belief provided
the rationale behind the abolition of the slave trade and then slavery itself, and persisted in a feeling
of paternalism displayed in the belief in the ability for the ‘savage’ to be lifted out of his degraded
life by the white man (and especially by missionary work). The white races were still superior to the
others, but there was at least the possibility that the latter might be lead from their backwardness
with the help of the more advanced and racially superior civilizations.This paternalistic theme even
provided a justification of imperial expansion for some – Emile Blanning, an apologist for empire
described the aim of conquest as ‘the initiation, under European guidance, of millions of Negroes
into superior conditions of existence.’5

However this paternalistic account was challenged from the 1850s by a more divisive account of
racial difference, initially provided by Robert Knox who argued that assimilation was a futile attempt
– races either survived or died out as independent units. Intermarriage was made impossible by the
innate dislike of other races and the fact that descendents of any ‘hybridization’ would always fall
back on the stronger race to sustain its racial strength. 6 Intermarriage proved to be a difficult issue
well beyond 1850 as the passage by Haggard demonstrates. There were fears for the degradation of
the British ‘stock’ if such intermarriage was allowed (Knox even thought that Americans were
already in the process of degrading because of the adverse foreign climate). Thus races were not
only fundamentally different, but attempts at raising the inferior races up were futile. Knox obviously
represents only a single thinker and cannot be taken as representative of popular culture, but
paternalistic ideas also gave way to ‘scientific naturalism’ in the latter part of the 19th century and
led to a wider adoption of a belief in irreconcilable racial difference as justification for more
authoritarian control – this concept sought out the ‘natural’ inclinations of man (and races) as
objective laws and ignored the role of consciousness and the will and unscientific subjectivities,
allowing the destruction of peoples to be seen as ‘natural’ and freeing from the perpetrators from
any blame.7

Why did such extreme racial justifications of conquest emerge in this period? The answer may have
been economic – initially the abolitionist movement had been tied to optimism about the ability of
worldwide free trade to encourage underdeveloped countries to release their labour to produce
goods for the world economy. Such optimism faded as alternatives to slavery such as indentured
labour proved to be the only way of gaining the kind of cheap labour plantations required to
maintain a healthy profit margin. This was compounded by the Indian Rebellion from 1857 and then
the Jamaican revolt of 1865 – both suggested that the inferior races could not be trusted to
discipline themselves – more direct control was needed. Race may also have been a retrospective
justification for Britain’s new-found world-leading economic position. Thus racial discourse was
fuelled by material demands for labour and political uprisings, suggesting that race was in fact a
superficial category fashioned to cover the realities of imperial rule (in a similar way that Marx
argued the evils of civil society were covered over by Christianity in On the Jewish Question). Thus
before even turning to race’s impact on nationality, it is possible that ‘race’ as a concept on its own
is vacuous and relies on more concrete content to give it applicability and weight.

Yet these two sets of ideas about race and civilization are only part of a much wider discourse on
progress. Firstly, Macaulay’s History of England was so successful because it blended a civilisational

4
S. West (ed.) The Victorians and Race (1996) p22
5
Blanning in Betts, R. F., The ‘Scramble’ for Africa – Causes and Dimensions of Empire (1966) p1
6
Knox in ed. H.E. Augstein Race: the Origins of an Idea (1996) p253
7
S. West (ed.) The Victorians and Race (1996) p23
Gabriel Lambert British 6 – Race and National Identity

perspective (a belief in the superiority of British cultural and institutional achievements) with an
almost romantic story of the heroic role of institutions and statesmen. 8 This demonstrates that a
belief in British national superiority did not have to rest on racial ideas and could instead be
conceived of in purely institutional terms. John Stuart Mill’s theory of ‘Ethology’ outlined in his
System of Logic suggested that the formation of national character deserved to be a science in its
own right – even though Mill speculated on the potential link between physical head size and
intelligence in On the Subjugation of Women, the core of such a science would be investigating the
environmental, educational and governmental influences on national character as opposed to racial
ones, an idea that was followed up by Buckle in his History of Civilization in England.9 Thus not only
was racial discourse divided, but it was not even necessarily the main theme involved in a discussion
of ‘progress’ and civilization (which had been discussed in depth since the ‘Stage Theory’ of the
Scottish Enlightenment) let alone national theory.

Such theories did not only develop in response to foreign ‘races’. Indeed one of the first essays on
race by Count Arthur Gobineau on the Inequality of Races in 1789 argued that civilizations ‘are equal
to the traits and spirit of the dominant race’10 and that within every society there were three race –
the dominant, conquering aristocracy, the bourgeoisie who were fortunate enough to have bred
with the nobility in the past, and the common people who had tainted noble blood with that of
negroes in the south and Finns in the North. This was a theme that was brought out in the British
press – racial theory was by no means only applied to foreign ‘races’ but to the working classes as
well. For instance, the Saturday Review commented that ‘The Bethnal Green poor...are a caste apart,
a race of whom we know nothing’ 11 while the higher echelons of society would visit India, Egypt and
the East End of London to ‘view the strange, the primitive and the exotic creatures.’ 12 In a fascinating
piece the Daily Telegraph called white workers Negroes – ‘there are a good many negroes in
Southampton who have the taste of their tribe for any disturbance that appears safe.’ 13 They were
said to be organising a counter-rally to the banquet prepared for Edward Eyre who had put down a
Jamaican revolt using particularly brutal means. This reveals not only that racial discourse could be
applied to the social behaviour of the working classes, but that the protesters clearly rejected the
idea that Eyre’s use of martial law was justified and thus were implicitly also rejecting the attached
racial theory that argued Jamaicans were savages that needed a greater level of aggression to be
brought into line than white race would. Such internal application of racial theory to the working
class surely confirms that a unified racial discourse was not present in a Victorian Britain in which
social class was in many respects a more important division than race.

Even if racial ideas were fragmented and some were even applied one must consider the extent to
which the different ideas informed ideas about nationality. One interesting case study is provided by
the human zoos, such as the ‘Kafir Kraal’ at the Greater Britain Exhibition in London in 1899. 14 On the
surface the national racial message was clear – the enactments of the Matabele War in the Kraal
demonstrated the ability of Britain to conquer, tame and then export other peoples to relive ‘Major
Wilson’s Last Stand’ and provide living imperial icons to rival the reported martyrdom of General
Gordon.15 It also gave visible examples of the ‘other’ against which all British people could claim
common cultural traits. Such spectacles were surely classless – regardless of one’s domestic social
status one could join in appreciation of the superiority of the British (assuming one believed in a
8
P. Mandler ‘“Race” and “Nation” in mid-Victorian thought’ in S. Collini et al. (eds),
History, Religion, Culture (2000) p235
9
Ibid p 237
10
Ibid, p83
11
Ibid, p93
12
Back, L and J. Solomos (eds.), Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader p14
13
Malik, K., The Meaning of Race. Race, History and Culture in Western Society p98
14
ed. Pascal Blanchard ... [et al.] Human zoos : science and spectacle in the age of colonial empires (2008) p29
15
Ibid p262
Gabriel Lambert British 6 – Race and National Identity

‘British’ race). Yet racial discourse was convoluted even in this case – in 152 two Khoisan children
were displayed as ‘earthmen’ and sang various songs together, including ‘Rule Britannia’, showing
that recently ‘liberated’ Africans could identify themselves as British subjects. The pair was praised
for displaying traces of civilization (in line with the paternalistic racial concern outlines above). Yet
two years later then were joined by two ‘Aztecs’ and it was claimed none of the performers could
communicate with one another and that they burrowed for insects and reptiles to eat – thus they
were incapable of civilization. 16 Thus the conflict between paternalism and a belief that civilization
was impossible was played out even in basic spectacle such as the human zoos, preventing a single
national message of either pure conquest or pure civilising.

Moreover, the audience did not necessarily just engage with the exhibits on a racial level – they
represented a sense of lost physicality and a raw connection with nature that fewer Britons were
able to experience for themselves. Perhaps seeing athletic displays of African villagers who had
allegedly relied on their bodies for their very survival fulfilled a deep social need to recapture a lost
relationship with nature.17 Rather than race, sexuality was also explored – over the course of the
1890s the villagers involved were increasingly eroticised, and shifted from being exotic objects of
curiosity to objects for the projection of fantasies. 18 Of course, the Africans’ sexual identity was
bound with racial ideas – the colour of their skin was associated with greater sexual freedom, even
sexual transgression. The reaction to the athletic appearance of some of the warriors (which excited
many of the young ladies) revealed a degree of sexual insecurity on British people’s part – it was one
thing to admire their forms from a martial perspective, but quite another to propose a union with
them. For instance, when ‘Prince Lobengula’, allegedly a warrior chieftain captured in the Matabele
war tried to marry a woman called Florence Jewell the popular uproar was intense – The Spectator
wrote ‘the white man, being supported in his faith by the whole history of the world, believes
firmly...that his colour marks him out as belonging to the hereditary aristocracy of mankind and
regards and degradation [read racial intermarriage] to that aristocracy as a kind of personal insult.’ 19
Interestingly the only positive report came from the Southern Echo in an article that argued he had
been brought up properly and therefore ‘knew what civilization was’ 20 demonstrating that it was
English manners as much as race that the press were concerned about. Thus the ‘human zoos’ were
the location for what would be most people’s only contact with another race – while they clearly
built a certain sense of British racial superiority, this would not have been the only thing visitors
would have taken away – sexuality, encounters with nature in a raw form and the dichotomy
between disciplined control of savages and their civilisation were all important.

Many aspects of nationalism have not been discussed. Firstly ‘British’ nationalism, as well as being
divided by class was divided by country. Despite assertions that Scots could feel both a Scottish and
British pride, when racial theory was discussed, it often defined the ‘superior race’ as distinctly
Anglo-Saxon and exclusive of Scotland, Wales and especially Ireland. Secondly nationalism was seen
as potentially dangerous force by politicians, including Gladstone, who felt it was atavistic and not
suitable for a nation as developed as Britain. One could feel patriotism in one’s institutions but blind
racial nationalism could lead to unnecessary agitation for unwanted conflict with other powers.
There was the complication of reconciling British identity with Imperialism – racial theory was
partially used to explain the difference in political status between mother country and less civilized
colonies, but care had to be taken when emphasising British political advancement for fear of
slipping into discussion of a democratic and equal political nation. In other words, the working class
might become conscious of the fact that they were regarded, at least from an economic perspective,

16
Ibid, p85
17
Ibid, p2
18
Ibid, p21
19
Mackenzie, J.M. (ed.), Imperialism and Popular Culture, p101
20
ibid
Gabriel Lambert British 6 – Race and National Identity

as an inferior race and then show solidarity with the colonized around the world. Indeed, where the
working class did display racist tendencies it was almost invariably a product of immigration and the
perception that newcomers were taking British jobs. Although the growing dominance of a less
paternalistic and more divisive racial theory has been discussed, its decline after the Boer War and
the moderation of all discourse on racial nationalism has not. But what has emerged is an immensely
complex picture of race and nationalism – both are concepts so fragmented and subject to change
that it is exceptionally difficult to generalise about either. While any attempts to find a racial element
in national identity has a great deal of material to use, it is necessary to look beyond race, and the
causes of that racial discourse – as has been suggested previously, they tended not to be ideological,
even if ideas did underpin the discourse, but informed by the reality of the political and economic
position Britain found itself in around the mid- and latter-19th century.

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