Lama 1

Lama Imam

Sir Marco

What is Modernity? S7

28th January 2020

Answer to Question 1

In Sven Lindquist’s, “Exterminate All the Brutes”, he Sven Lindqvist outlines the birth

of racism during the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the nineteenth century

imperialistic ideology and genocide were being criticised

During the nineteenth century European expansion, this attitude whose central crux

comprised of ideas of equality, was replaced by that of the justification of genocide as an

unavoidable consequence of progress.

In 1838, a great anthropologist, J.C Pritchard claimed that the savage races could not be

saved. This rising threat of extermination provided motivation to anthropologists for research

which in return allowed the exterminators an excuse to exterminate, namely that it was

inevitable. In that same year Herman Merivale refuted Pritchard’s theory that “the white is

destined to extirpate the savage” (Lindquist,123) by stating that human life is lost numerously

but its because of natural reasons. He further says that the history of European colonies in

America, Africa and Australia have in common the sweeping destruction of their native

inhabitants by the uninhibited atrocities of the Europeans. A British parliamentary

commission, set up in 1837, came to the same conclusion.

Prejudice against the others (those not a part of the west) had always existed but it was

justified using science as an anchor only during the 19 th century. This idea was first

engineered by Robert Knox. His book, the Races of man(1850) makes an abhorrent leap from

Knox’s own prejudices to his claims being backed by science. Knox had studied comparative
Lama 2

anatomy and from his very limited experience of having performed an autopsy on only one

colored person he justified historical instances of the darker races being slaves to the lighter

ones by saying that darker skinned people were psychologically inferior due to the more

fiborous texture of their brain. He went on to make similar ignorant claims lacking an

empirical basis on the inferiority and unavoidable spoliation of the darker races. He lost all

credibility when he was accused of using assassins to attain corpses for his studies.

Darwin’s “origin of species” gave life to Knox’s ideas again, Darwin neither confirmed

of denied knox’s theories but it was still a justification for the racists “After Darwin race

became the wholly decisive explanation and was accepted and became a central part of british

imperial ideology” (Lindquist,130).

In January 1864 a debate on the extinction of races was arranged by the

Anthropological society of London where Richard Lee in his speech reminded the listeners of

the fate of nations similar to genocide in Tasmania. “Through its moral and intellectual

superiority, the Anglo-Saxon race is sweeping away the earlier inhabitants, said Richard Lee”

(Lindquist,132). T.Bendshye opposed Lee’s views by saying that “The natives die out only

when their land is taken from them. Although some Indian tribes of America had been almost

exterminated, they can repopulate for man reproduced himself regardless of

race”(Lindquist,132) A.R Wallace, the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution, considered

natural selection homologous to extermination, “Contact with Europeans leads the lower,

mentally underdeveloped peoples of other continents to inevitable destruction says

Wallace”(Lindqiust,132) Darwin and Wallace drew parallels between science and

extermination by relating the almost extermination of a New Zealander rat by an European rat

and European weeds overrunning North America respectively to European biological

superiority and the “inevitable decline of other races.”(Lindquist,133)

 Lama 3

Darwin understood the struggle for life but believe it developed man. He also pointed out

how extermination of races was not really due to natural selection since “The intellectually

and morally deficient, succeeded best in life and reproduced themselves most rapidly”

(Lindquist,133) William Greg justified this by saying that this struggle between races could

prevent racial decay. Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton justifies this contradiction further by

saying that to avoid going extinct we must work towards improving hereditary factors to

better survive in a civilised world. Galton further says that reproduction rate of the middle

class was higher because civilised sexes had just lost interest in each other after civilisation.

Sven goes on to say that “During the 19 th century Europeans had encroached on vast

territories… And the dying nations were dying just because their lands were taken from

them”. (141) He then claims that even though we want genocide to have started and ended

with Nazism, it had already existed and Adolf Hitler knew it already since “The air he and all

other western people in his childhood had breathed was soaked in conviction that imperialism

is a biologically necessary process and leads to the inevitable destruction of the lower races”

(Lindquist,141.)

In the mid-nineteenth century the Germans had still not exterminated any nation and

looked more critically on this concept than other Europeans. Georg Gerland a pupil of a

German Anthropologist did extensive research on causes of extermination and concluded that

it was due to the bloodthirstiness and cruelty of a seemingly intellectual people, the

Europeans and that “It is no law of nature that primitive people must die.” (Lindquist,143) In

1891 Friedrich Ratzel, a German anthropologist writes “The theory that dying lout is

predestined by the inner weakness of an individual race is faulty. It is the Europeans that

cause destruction; as the “superior race” is a minority.” (Lindquist,144) Ratzel well full circle

on his views by saying that looking deeply, t the decline of the lower races can be blamed on
 Lama 4

their inner weaknesses and not just on advancement by higher people, at the beginning of

1890s as colonial ambitions had begun to rise in Germany also. He became a founding

member of the Pan-German league an organization had creation of a German colonial empire

highest on their agenda. In 1894, the Pan-German League stated in their paper that “the

conditions of life for the German race could be assured only through elbow room where

lower races would lose their existence, anyhow worthless to civilization. (Lindquist,148)

In Africa in 1904 the Germans demonstrated their first instance of hastening

extermination of the Herero people. They drove them out of their lands and when they

resisted they were ordered to be exterminated. The cause of extermination was termed

rebellion and the cause of rebellion as the Hereros warlike nature when in reality their leader

had signed multiple treaties to avoid war with German over 2 decades ago “But just as

Americans did not feel the need to feel themselves bound by their treaties with Indians,

Germans didn’t think they had to abide by any treaties made with the natives”.

(Lindquist,150)

The previously mentioned elbow-room that the Germans wanted to acquire was

“given wings” when Ratzel coined it as Lebensraum (Living space). In this concept he

explained that since the time life first came into existence there has always been a lack of

space and “life has been fighting life for space”. (Lindquist,153) And that a much larger

Lebensraum needed to be conquered to have sufficient land to earn a livelihood and others

have to be displaced for this to happen. Germany’s approach, unlike that of previous

colonizers, was not to conquer the largest amount of land but to develop technology and

education and its economy utilizing the land best thus its economy grew the quickest at the

end of 1800s and Germany built the second largest colonial empire [… I’m afraid that
Lundqvist’s reading explains the link between land-grabbing and technological progress in

somewhat different terms…].

Lama 5

In the shorterm Hitler wanted to conquer the agricultural lands of the Soviet Union to supply

food to wartime Germany and in this way killed millions of soviets which would serve as a

long term advantage of incorporation of these lands by Hitler into the German Lebensraum.

The first to be gassed in Aushwitz were the Russian prisoners of war. These were war

killings while the Jews were murdered. Of all the non Jewish Russians a lot were granted

reprieve from death to work as slaves whereas all Jews were to be exterminated. “In that, the

Holocaust was unique-in Europe. But in the history of Western expansion in other parts of the

world many examples of total extermination of whole people can be seen”. (Lidquist,158)

The intention behind this conquest was not to murder Jews but to acquire more

Lebensraum for Germany. Jews were just considered landless [… but then… if they were

landless, how could the Germans acquire more land by killing them?], aimless, scattered

people deemed to belong to an ever lower race than Russians, who could not claim the right

to live and were to be exterminated if they resisted. “Auswhitz was the modern industrial

application of a policy of extermination on which European world domination had long since

rested”. (Lindquist,160)

Grade: 19/20
 Lama 6

Work Cited:

1: Lindqvist, Sven. Exterminate All the Brutes. Granta, 2018