Paul Broca
On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo

EDITOR’S PREFACE

The Publishing Committee of the Anthropological Society have done me the honour to confide to me the task of editing Dr. Broca’s valuable little volume. This duty I have now fulfilled, and hope that the members of the Society and the general public will experience the same pleasure in reading the translation, as I received when first I perused the original.

The causes which led the committee to suggest the publication of the present translation are lucidly expressed by the motto which Dr. Broca placed on his title-page. The public mind is so little acquainted with the real facts relating to the hybridity of the Races of Man, that its investigation, “non ex vulgi opinione, sed ex sano judicio,” is necessary to the efficient progress of our science. Such an appeal, however, necessitates that the whole subject should be again reviewed, and to attain this object the perusal of a work on similar principles to that of Dr. Broca becomes the primary requisite for future researches. It may be said, that no work which so completely investigates the whole subject of Human Hybridity has ever been published, and the Council having confirmed the recommendation of the Publishing Committee, I have endeavoured to perform my allotted task with as much prospect of success as could be anticipated amidst the pressure of numerous and laborious avocations unconnected with the Society.

The necessity for the publication of this work in England may be conceived, when we reflect on the laxly defined ideas which form an integral part of the intellectual heritage of even educated Englishmen, with regard to the problems of anthropology. We have been so often told, that all races of men have been demonstrably proved to be fertile inter se, that many have conceived that the laws regulating this presumed fertility are ascertained and fixed, beyond the reach of disproof, or even of doubt. The Author and Editor of the following pages are, however, of a different opinion; and are content to wait for the accumulation of future facts.

To obviate any misconstruction which may be placed on my meaning on this topic, I shall quote the words of the great Dutch philosopher: —

“I invite not the vulgar, therefore, nor those whose minds, like theirs, are full of prejudices, to the perusal of this book. I would much rather that they should entirely neglect it, than that they should misconstrue its purpose and contents after the fashion usual with them.”

I should have felt more gratification if the task of interpreting the thoughts of the great French master of our science had fallen into worthier hands than my own. The habitual methods of thought of Dr. Paul Broca are so exact, his style so terse, his knowledge of the literature of Anthropology so vast, and his power of application and concentration of ideas so powerful, that a just preference might have selected another Editor. It has scarcely been necessary for me to add a single foot-note to the lucid exposition of the Secretary of our parent Society.

It is my pleasurable duty to thank my friend Dr. James Hunt, the President of our Society, for the kindness by which he placed in my hands the editorship of this volume, and for many most valuable suggestions regarding it. To my colleague Mr. J. Frederick Collingwood, for whose friendly assistance in the performance of the secretarial duties I am indebted for the leisure which has enabled me to edit this work, my thanks are also due.

To the Council and to the Society I now commit this little tract, an earnest of the more important works which will be hereafter published during the year 1864, in the hope that it may ultimately advance the best interests of the science all sincere anthropologists must desire to aid.

C. C. B.

4, St. Martin’s Place,

March, 1864.

GLOSSARIAL NOTE

The significations of the following words, habitually used by Dr. Broca, are appended: —

Agenesic. Mongrels of the first generation, entirely unfertile, either between each other, or with the two parent species, and consequently being unable to produce either direct descendants or mongrels of the second generation.

Dysgenesic. Mongrels of the first generation, nearly altogether sterile.

a. Unfertile with each other, therefore with no direct descendants.

b. They sometimes, but rarely and with difficulty, breed with one or the other parent species. The mongrels of the second generation, produced by this interbreeding, are infertile.

Paragenesic. Mongrels of the first generation having a partial fecundity.

a. They are hardly fertile or infertile inter se, and when they produce direct descendants, these have merely a decreasing fertility, tending to necessary extinction at the end of some generations.

b. They breed easily with one at least of the two parent species. The mongrels of the second generation, issued from this second breeding, are themselves and their descendants fertile inter se, and with the mongrels of the first generation, with the nearest allied pure species, and with the intermediate mongrels arising from these various crossings.

Eugenesic. Mongrels of the first generation entirely fertile.

a. They are fertile inter se, and their direct descendants are equally so.

b. They breed easily and indiscriminately with the two parent species; the mongrels of the second generation, in their turn are, themselves and their descendants, indefinitely fertile, both inter se or with the mongrels of all kinds which result from the mixture of the two parent species.

SECTION I

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON CROSSING IN HUMAN RACES

That very ingenious writer, M. A. de Gobineau,¹ whose efforts have been directed towards bringing the light of modern ethnology to bear upon the political and social history of nations, but who, in this very difficult and almost entirely new inquiry, has more than once indulged in paradoxical generalisations, has thought proper to affirm, in his Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1855), that the crossing of races constantly produces disastrous effects, and that, sooner or later, a physical and moral degeneration is the inevitable result thereof. It is, therefore, chiefly to this cause that he attributes the decline of the Roman Republic and the downfall of liberty, which was soon followed by the decline of civilisation. I am very far from sharing his opinion, and, were this the proper place, I might show that the social corruption and the intellectual degradation which prepared the ruin of the Roman power was due to quite different causes. M. Gobineau’s proposition appears to me by far too general; and I am still more opposed to the opinion of those who advance that every mixed race separated from the parent stocks is incapable of perpetuation.² It has even been asserted that the United States of America, where the Anglo-Saxon race is still predominant, but which is overrun by immigrants of various other races, is, by that very circumstance, threatened with decay, inasmuch as this continuous immigration may have the effect of producing a hybrid race containing the germ of future sterility. Do we not know that, on the faith of this prognostication, a certain party has proposed the restriction of foreign immigration, and even in England there have been serious men who have predicted, from ethnological causes, the overthrow of the United States, just as Ezekiel predicted the ruin of Alexandria.

When we see the prosperity and the power of the new continent grow with such unexampled rapidity, we can certainly put no faith in such a prediction. Still there must have been a certain number of fundamental facts, which led even monogenists to deny the viability of all crossed races. They must have sought in vain among the nations of the earth for a race manifestly hybrid, with well-defined characters, intermediate between two known races, perpetuating itself without the concurrence of the parent races.

“When the facts quoted above,” says M. Georges Pouchet, “are not sufficient to prove that a mongrel breed cannot be engendered, can we anywhere find one? Do we find a people conserving a medium type between two other types? We see them nowhere just as little as we see a race of mules. The fact is, that such a race, such a type can only have an ephemeral subjective existence.”³

Pretended examples of hybrid races (note on the Griquas of Southern Africa)

The question, where do we find hybrid races subsisting by themselves, has been asked before M. Pouchet. Dr. Prichard, in replying to it, could only find three instances: – 1. The Griquas, the progeny of the Hottentots and the Dutch. 2. The Cafusos of the forests of Varama (Brazil), a race described by Spix and Martius, and, according to them, the offspring of indigenous Americans and African Negroes. 3. The mop-headed Papuans inhabiting the island of Waigiou and the surrounding islands and the northern part of New Guinea, and who, according to MM. Quoy and Gaimard, are a hybrid race, the issue of a union of Malays and the Papuans proper.⁴

These three examples have been objected to, and are indeed liable to objections.⁵ We know next to nothing about the Cafusos, and no one can positively assert that they have remained unmixed with the indigenous race; but we know for certain that the Griquas have risen since the commencement of this century around a Protestant mission, by the fusion of some Dutch-Hottentot bastaard families with a large number of the Hottentot race, the Bosjesmen, and the Kaffir race. This example then proves, by no means, that a mixed race can perpetuate itself separately.⁶

With regard to the mop-headed Papuans, they live in a region the ethnography of which is scarcely known. MM. Quoy and Gaimard are of opinion that they are the issue of a mixture between the Malays and indigenous Negroes (sic); but they only advanced this opinion as an hypothesis: “They appeared to us to hold a medium place between those people (Malays) and the Negroes in regard to character, physiognomy, and the nature of their hair.”⁷ This is all those authors say; but Mr. Lesson instead of quoting this as a mere hypothesis, says, “These people have been perfectly described by MM. Quoy and Gaimard, who were the first to demonstrate that they constitute a hybrid race, and are, unquestionably, the issue of Papuans (properly so called) and Malays located in those parts, and which form the mass of the population.” Mr. de Rienzi, on the other hand, has described two varieties of Papuan hybrids: one variety the issue of a crossing between the Papuans and the Malays, – the Papou-Malays; the second variety, the issue of an intermixture between the Papuans and the Alforian-Endamenes – the Pou-Endamenes.⁸ There is already a complication here. Now comes Mr. Maury, who maintains that the race issued from the Papuans and Malays is the Alforian race.⁹ What are we to conclude from these contradictions? M. Quoy and Gaimard had a certain impression, M. Rienzi entertained a somewhat different impression, to which the authorities cited by Mr. Maury are altogether opposed. All is then, as yet, an hypothesis, and the question is as yet doubtful. In this uncertainty it might well be asked whether the Malays, the Alfourous, the mop-headed Papuans, and the Papuans properly so called might not be as many pure races. It is not merely in the region of the mop-headed Papuans that the other three races are to be met with. The Malays, an invading people par excellence, have, like the English, established themselves on all the coasts accessible to their vessels, and if the mop-headed race occupies only a very confined district, and is perfectly unknown elsewhere where the same elements are present, we are permitted to conclude that it is not the result of an intermixture. Moreover, Dr. Latham, the most zealous of Dr. Prichard’s pupils, informs us that Mr. Earle has seen and described “the real and undoubted hybrids” of the Papuans and Malays, and that these are altogether different from the mop-headed Papuans.¹⁰

It will be perceived that the example of the Papuans is a worse selection than that of the Griquas, since it is very probable that those mop-headed men, the type of which was so perfectly described by Dampier two centuries ago, having been since preserved without alteration, are a pure race. Granting even that it is demonstrated that they belong to a hybrid race, they can scarcely be cited as a mixed race persisting by themselves, since, so far from living secluded from the two races from which they are said to be the issue, they live with them in the same localities. MM. Quoy and Gaimard, in their description of these pretended mongrels, add that there were Negroes among them (by which name they designate the Papuans proper) which formed a part of the tribe which visited us daily. There were even among them two individuals of a higher complexion, which, rightly or wrongly, were considered to be descended from Europeans or Chinese. It was thus a very mixed people. Mr. Lesson, speaking of the population of the small island of Waigiou,¹¹ says that two races are found there, the Malays and the Alfourous, besides the hybrid races of the Papuans: “These are men without vigour or moral energy, subjected to the authority of the Malay rajahs, and frequently reduced to slavery by the surrounding islanders.”¹² But it is well known what is the consequence of slavery, especially under an equatorial climate, and among a people given to incontinency. It is, then, simply impossible that the mop-headed race of the Isle of Waigiou should remain free from intermixture with the

Alfourous and the Malays, and if this race be really hybrid, it is not easy to see how Prichard and his adherents are authorised to assert that they persist by themselves.

The three examples adduced by Prichard having thus proved without any absolute value, a diametrically opposite doctrine has been advanced. It has been said that since this author was obliged to go so far for such indifferent examples, it amounts to a proof that he could not find any others,¹³ and the conclusion was arrived at that a mixed race neither has nor could have a permanent existence.

This novel assertion is perfectly erroneous, and if it found adherents, it is simply because the question has been badly put; because the word race has not received a precise signification, and consequently, a very confused acceptation has been given to the term.

Among the various characters which distinguish the numerous varieties of the genus homo, some are more or less important, and more or less evident. To distinguish two races, a single character, however slight, is sufficient, provided it be hereditary and sufficiently fixed. If, for instance, two peoples differed merely from each other by the colour of the hair and the beard, though they may resemble each other in every other respect, by the simple fact that the one has black, whilst the other has fair hair, it may be asserted that they are not of the same race. This is the popular and the true meaning of the term race, which, however, does not necessarily implicate the idea either of identity or diversity of origin. Thus all ethnologists and historians, all the monogenists, and polygenistic authors say that the Irish proper are not of the same race as the English. The Germans, the Celts, the Basques, the Sclaves, the Jews, Arabs, Kabyles, etc., etc., are considered more or less separate races, more or less easy to be characterised, and more or less distinguished by their manners, tongues, history and origin. There are thus a large number of human races; but if, instead of considering all the characters, we confine ourselves to take into consideration but a few of the more important, or if, after having by an analytical process, first studied the various races separately, we now subject them to a synthetic process, we soon recognise that there exists among them numerous affinities, which enable us to dispose them in a certain number of natural groups.

The ensemble of the characters common to each group, constitute the type of that group. Thus, all the races we have just enumerated, and many others, have the skin white, regular features, soft hair, oval face, vertical jaws, and elliptical cranium, etc. These points of resemblance give them in some sort a family likeness, by which they are recognised at once, and which has caused them to be designated by the collective name of Caucasian races. The hyperborean races, and those of Eastern Asia, constitute the family of Mongolian races; the group of Ethiopian races equally comprises a large number of black races with woolly hair, and a prognathous head. The American and the Malayo-Polynesian races form the two last groups.

It must not be believed that all human races can with equal facility be ranged in either of these divisions; nor must we believe that the characteristic traits of one group are equally marked in all the dependent races; nor even that they are found combined in any of these races; nor, finally, that in the centre of each group we find a typical race in which all the characters have their maximum of development. This might be the case if all known races had descended from five primitive stocks, as admitted by several polygenists, or if, as many monogenists think, humanity, one in the beginning, had soon afterwards been divided into five principal trunks, from which issued, as so many accessory branches, the numerous sub-divisions which constitute the secondary races. But there is no race which can pretend to personify within itself the type to which it belongs. This type is fictitious; the description is an ideal one, like the forms of the Apollo de Belvedere. Human types, like all other types, are merely abstractions, and in proportion as we attach more importance to this or that character, we obtain a more or less considerable number of types. Thus, Blumenbach had five, Cuvier only three, and Bérard describes fifteen types. This is also proved by the fact, that whilst many races attach themselves directly and evidently to a fixed type, there are others belonging to two very dissimilar types. Thus the Abyssinians are Caucasian in form and Ethiopian by colour. The description of the principal types is thus merely a methodical process, fit to facilitate, by the formation of a certain number of groups, the comparison of human races, and to simplify the partial description of each. This division has, moreover, the advantage of establishing for the greater part of the races, their degree of relative affinity or divergence. It even accords to a certain point with their primitive repartition upon the surface of the globe, which has permitted, without doing any violence to the facts, to distinguish the types by denominations borrowed from geography.¹⁴

There is in the human mind a tendency to personify abstractions. These ideal types have usurped a place in the domain of facts, so that a real existence has been given to them. The monogenists had, strictly speaking, a right to do so without any violence to their principles; but the polygenists, who have followed their example, have sinned against logic. The former attribute all varieties of the human species to the numerous modifications of five principal races, issued themselves from one common stock, and the same influences which, according to then, have in the origin produced fundamental races, have afterwards by an analogous process produced the secondary races. All this is sufficiently clear; and such stood the question when the polygenists appeared in the arena. Their first efforts were directed to attack the doctrine in its essential foundations, and to demonstrate that by no natural causation could Whites be transformed into Negroes, or Negroes into Mongolians; they therefore proclaimed the multiplicity of human origin and the plurality of species. Be it that they have shrunk from the idea of causing too great a revolution in science, or that they thought that it would conduce sooner to the triumph of their doctrine, they retained as far as possible the number of species, and confined themselves to assume a primitive stock for each of the five races described by the Unitarians. I do not assert that all polygenists followed this course, as some proceeded in a more independent manner. Bory de Saint-Vincent, Desmoulins, P. Bérard, Morton, had the courage to break entirely with the past, and to remodel the classical divisions. They found, however, but few imitators; and many polygenists are to this day content to assign a distinct origin to each of the five principal trunks, which constitute for the monogenists the five fundamental races, but which are to us only natural groups formed by the union of races or species of the same type. They continue also very often to use the term race to designate the ensemble of all individuals of each group, adopting thus by a sort of transaction the language of those whose system they reject; and thus they speak of the white or Caucasian race, the yellow or Mongolian race, the black or Ethiopian race, etc., as if all these individuals of a Caucasian type resembled each other to constitute one race; as if, for instance, the brown Celts and the fair-haired Germans had descended from the same primitive stock. This contradiction has given a handle to the monogenists; for if climate and mode of life may cause a German to become a Celt, there is no reason why, under certain influences, a Celt might not become a Berber, a Berber a Foulah, a Foulah a Negro, and a Negro an Australian.

I easily comprehend how careful we ought to be to employ in Anthropology the term species. It can scarcely be used with certainty until science has clearly circumscribed the limits of each species of men. This moment is not come yet, and may, perhaps, never arrive, for, in the midst of constant changes produced by crossing, migrations, and conquests, and with the certainty that several races, or a great number of them, have disappeared within historical time,¹⁵ it seems impossible to appreciate the degree of purity of certain races, to discover their origin, to know whether they are autochthonic or exotic, whether they belonged originally to this or that Fauna, and re-establish the Ethnology of our planet as it was in the beginning. To fix the number of primitive species of men, or even the number of actual species, is an insoluble problem to us, and probably to our successors. The attempts of Desmoulins et Bory de Saint Vincent have only produced imperfect sketches, which have led to contradictory classifications, where the number of arbitrary divisions is nearly equal to more natural divisions.

The term species has, in classical language, an absolute sense, implying both the idea of a special conformation and special origin, and if some races – the Australians, for instance – unite these conditions in a sufficient degree, to constitute a clearly marked species, many other pure or mixed races escape, in this respect, a rigorous appreciation. It is for these reasons that many polygenists, after having proclaimed the multiplicity of the origins of humanity, and having recognised the impossibility of determining the number and the characters of the primitive stocks, have justly avoided methodically to divide the human genus into species. Many among them, however, who thought that they were, nevertheless, bound to establish divisions, have committed the error to accept the basis of the classification of the monogenists, and, like them, to establish five chief human families, and, like them, to admit that the individuals of each family are issued from a common trunk, with this difference, that, whilst the monogenists assume that the five primary trunks have proceeded from the same stock, and have the same roots, the pentagenists (if we may use this term) assume five distinct and independent stocks. Logically speaking, it would have been requisite to term the five fundamental races of the monogenists species, but it is easy to perceive that, for many reasons, the term species cannot be employed here in an absolute sense. The pentagenists have felt this, and, for want of a better term, use the word race, which has thus been diverted from its real acceptation.

Significations of the words race and type

The word race has thus, in the language of authors, two very different significations; one is particular and exact, the other general and misleading. Taken in the first sense, it designates individuals sufficiently resembling each other, that we may, without prejudging their origin, and without deciding whether they are the issues of one or several primitive couples, admit, if necessary, as theoretically possible, that they have descended from common parents. Such are, for instance, among the white races, the Arabs, the Basques, the Celts, the Kimris, the Germans, the Berbers, etc.; and among the black races, the Ethiopian Negroes, the Caffres, the Tasmanians, Australians, Papuans, etc.

In the second, that is to say, in a general sense, the term race designates the ensemble of all such individuals who have a certain number of characters in common, and who, though differing in other characters, and divided, perhaps, in an indefinite number of natural groups or races, have to each other a greater morphological affinity than they have with the rest of mankind.

Every confusion in words exposes us to errors in the interpretation of facts, and this rather long digression in relation to the origin of a denomination, borrowed by certain polygenists from the language of monogenists, enables us to understand the denial of the existence of mixed races, and why Prichard could only oppose to this idea the doubtful and fictitious examples of the Cafusos, the Griquas, and the mop-headed Papuans.

If, indeed, it were true that there are only five races of men on the globe, and if it were capable of demonstration that either of them, in mixing with another, produced eugenesic Mulattos capable of constituting a mixed race enduring by itself, without the ulterior concurrence of the parent races, the embarrassment would not yet be at an end. After having succeeded to establish such a demonstration for two of the chief races, it would by no means necessarily result that the intercrossings of the nine other combinations are eugenesic like the first. We should then be obliged to prove (what is evidently impracticable), by ten successive examples, that the ten possible intercrossings between the five fundamental races are all equally and completely prolific. The difficulty is such, that Dr. Prichard, after much research, could only find the three instances already cited and refuted. These facts having proved inconclusive, and other facts which we shall mention presently having induced the theory that certain intermixtures are imperfectly prolific, the pentagenists were led to the opinion that the possibility of a definitive intermixture of races is by no means established, and that, on the contrary, this possibility may be denied.

The pentagenists occupied themselves at first chiefly with the intermixture of the five chief races; but even from this point of view, and taking the term race in a general sense, their negation, though, it must be admitted, far from being justifiable, is still founded upon a more solid basis, and less removed from the truth than the opposed affirmation. Hence it was considered valuable ad interim. But the principle of non-intermixture of races being once promulgated, the confusion of terms soon became apparent. The negation which was at first applied merely to the artificial groups formed by the reunion of races of the same type was applied to natural races, and thus arose that frightful proposition, that no mixed races can subsist in humanity.

It is noteworthy how this excessive and exclusive theory differs from the first, which it has displaced. There is such a gap between the starting point and the conclusion, that it could never have been cleared had not the ambiguous term race concealed the distance. The fact is established that affinities of organisation may exercise some influence on the results of crossing. In studying the phenomena of hybridity in quadrupeds and birds, we have already stated that homœogenesis, without being always proportionate to the degree of the proximity of species, decreases ordinarily in comparison with more removed animals, and that probability induces us to expect similar phenomena in the intermixture of human beings. But what have been the bases of the monogenists and of the pentagenists in forming the five ethnological groups, which constitute the five fundamental races? Why have all Caucasian races been united by them in one family, and called by them the white or the Caucasian race? It has been already stated because the races with a skin more or less white possess between themselves a greater affinity than with any of the other races. In other terms, the zoological distance is less between Celts, Germans, Kimris, etc., compared with that existing between them and the Negroes, Caffres, Lapps, Australians, Malays, etc.

Supposing now that it has been demonstrated – which it has not – that the races of any group can never engender a durable and permanent line by an intermixture with any of the others, can we infer from this that the races of the same group are equally incapable of producing by their intermixture mongrels indefinitely prolific? Just as little as the sterility of the union between the dog and the fox would enable us to infer the sterility between the wolf and the dog; these conclusions would be as little physiological as the former. Such as deny the fecundity of the reciprocal cross-breeds of the five chief primary races might err in some points, and be right as to others. But those who extend this by far too general negation in applying it to the intermixture of secondary races of the same group commit a more serious error. They have reasoned like the monogenists, who knowing from experience that certain human races may become mixed without limitation, have affirmed that all the races, without exception, are in a similar condition. There obtains thus a strange contradiction in these two schools; the one maintains resolutely that all races may intermix, and that their offspring and their descendants will be as prolific as if they were of a pure race, whilst the second as firmly sustains that no mixed race can have any other but an ephemeral existence.

Between these opposite assertions we may well ask where lies the truth? Facts must answer the question. We shall endeavour to examine a few. Some of the facts are in favour of the monogenists, others support the opinion of their adversaries, from which we shall be enabled to infer that in the genus homo, as in the genera of their mammalia, there are different degrees of homœogenesis, according to the races or species; that the cross-breeds of certain races are perfectly eugenesic; that others occupy a less elevated position in the series of hybridity; and finally, that there are human races the homœogenesis of which is still so obscure, that the results even of the first intermixture are still doubtful.

SECTION II

OF EUGENESIC HYBRIDITY IN MANKIND

If the opinion I wish to combat were not supported by authors of If, perhaps, be superfluous to demonstrate that there exists in the human species eugenesic hybrids. Most of the readers of these pages must reconcile themselves to this qualification, for assuredly men of a pure race are very rare in the country they inhabit. Nothing is, in fact, more clear than that many modern nations, to commence with the French, have been formed by the intermixture of two or more races. My excellent teacher, Gerdy,¹⁶ has devoted a long chapter, in his Physiology, to this subject, and has, after great research, arrived at the conclusion that all, or nearly all, actual races have been crossed more than once, and that the primitive types of mankind, altered and modified by so many crossings, are no longer represented upon the earth. There is here much exaggeration: for there are races who, by a peculiar geographical situation, and the prejudices of caste or religion, have remained in a state of purity; and on the other hand, as M. P. Bérard¹⁷ remarks, it is not sufficient for the production of a mongrel race, that two groups of different races should become allied and fused. If in either of the groups there exists too great a numerical inequality, the mongrels resume, after the lapse of a few generations, nearly all the traits of the more numerous race, and are fused in it. It is for this reason that, despite of numerous crossings, many races have preserved all their characters from remote antiquity. I have already had occasion to observe that the Fellahs of present Egypt are exactly like the figures represented upon the Pharaonic epoch.¹⁸ No country has, however, been so frequently conquered as Egypt, which from Cambyses to Mehemet-Ali, for more than twenty-three centuries has been governed and oppressed by peoples of foreign races, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, and Mamelukes. The Macedonian colonies, founded by Alexander and his successors, soon lost their ethnological character.¹⁹ Southern Italy has not preserved the impress of the Norman race. It would be vain to search in Asia Minor for the descendants of the Gauls with fair hair,²⁰ who once established themselves in Galatia; and though the Visigoths possessed Spain for more than two centuries, and have never been expelled from it, and we may without exaggeration compute the number of the conquerors at several hundred thousand, and though their blood, mitigated by intermixture, runs to this day in the veins of an immense number of Spaniards, the latter have preserved no trace of their Germanic origin.

But when the intermixture of races is effected in nearly equal proportions, or if it be the result, not of one invasion, but of a constant and abundant immigration, the case is altogether different, and the fusion of the ethnological elements gives rise to a hybrid population, in which the number of individuals of a pure race is constantly diminishing, so that at the termination of a few centuries the representatives of the two primitive types become the exceptions. In a long Memoir “On the Ethnology of France,” which I lately read before the Anthropological Society of Paris, I have shown to what extent intermixture may modify the physiognomy of a people. Examining in the first place the records of history on hand, the origin of the populations of our departments, and appreciating as much as possible the proportion of the elements which we find in combination; determining, also, for each region the principal and the accessory stocks, I have been enabled to find in the present French nation, in the midst of the innumerable variations of stature, complexion, hair, eyes, cephalic shapes, etc., which may everywhere be expected in mixed races; I have been able to detect, I repeat, the characters of these different races, and to recognise the more or less marked and dominant impress of the Celts, Kimris, Romans, and Germans. I was even enabled, on the statistics of recruiting, to give to my inquiries, in regard to stature, a rigorous precision. I cannot in this place enter into any details: I am obliged to refer the reader to the Memoir, which is published by the Anthropological Society. In point of fact, it was merely because eminent men have for some years doubted the existence of eugenesic hybridity in mankind, that it became necessary to demonstrate so evident a proposition, that the population of France in at least nineteen-twentieths of our territory, presents in unequal degrees the characters of mixed races.

This single example might suffice; but I have no doubt that by examining in a similar manner the historical origin and the actual condition of the peoples of Northern Italy, Southern Germany, Great Britain – not to speak of the United States, where the fusion of blood is probably inexplicable – it might be demonstrated with equal certainty, that these different races have given birth, by their intermixture, to ethnological modifications still recognisable. In all these countries is the instability of anthropological characters in contrast with the fixity which is the mark of pure races; and we might say, without fear of error, that the greater part of Western Europe is inhabited by mixed races.

Moreover, the authors who have denied the existence of mixed races, have not denied that there are in Europe and elsewhere, numerous vivacious populations, formed by the intermixture of two or several distinct races. They merely asserted that mongrel breeds, whatever their origin, were necessarily inferior in reference to fecundity to individuals of pure blood, and that their direct descendants would become extinct after a few generations, unless they contracted new alliances with the mother races, or at least with one of them. If we object to this, that the mixed populations possess everywhere, as those of France and Great Britain, a vitality and fecundity which leaves nothing to be desired, they reply that this proves nothing; that the cross breeds are prolific in a collateral line, as is observed in cases of paragenesic hybridity, and they add that two cases may present themselves:

1. If among the two primitive races these obtain a very large numerical inequality, the predominant race soon absorbs the other. After two or three generations, the less numerous race counts scarcely one representative, and the cross-breeds are fused in the more numerous race. The latter thus returns to a state of original purity. The mixed race has only a transitory duration, and leaves no trace of its existence.

2. If, on the contrary, the two races, though numerically unequal, are in sufficient proportion that neither can absorb the other, both persist indefinitely beside each other upon the same soil. The hybrid race which they engender, seems also to persist indefinitely; but only in appearance, for they constantly intermarry with the pure races, while the latter marry between themselves. The mixed race gains thus, in every generation, a contingent equal to what it loses, those which represent it at present are not the descendants of those who represented the mixed race five or six generations back. It is not maintained by itself: existing only under the condition of being sustained by the races from which it is issued, and if there arrived a time when it is completely isolated from these two races, and reduced to its own forces, it would necessarily become extinct after a few generations.

I might urge some objection against the first point, for it does not seem to me to be demonstrated, that in a mixture of very unequal proportions, the less numerous race exercises no influence upon the other race. I acknowledge, however, that this influence, if it exists, is sufficiently slight to be set aside.

The second point is much more serious, for if accepted without restriction, we must admit that eugenesic hybridity does not exist in mankind, and that all cross-breeds, whatever their origin, whether they are issued from nearly approaching or distant races, not merely the descendants of whites and negroes, but also of Celts and Kimris, are incapable of engendering a durable posterity. For my part, I believe that such is actually the case with certain mongrel-breeds; I believe that in the genus Homo, there are very unequal degrees of eugenesic hybridity; but after having recognised that eugenesic hybridity does exist between dog and wolf, hare and rabbit, goat and sheep, camel and dromedary, I am permitted to say that it also exists between certain races of men.

Among the facts quoted to prove the sterility of human cross-breeds, some are of great value: and we shall examine them in the sequel; others have been wrongly interpreted, while some are far from being exact. I have already pointed out a cause of error which was not taken into account, and which occurs frequently: it is the change of climate which alone is capable of sterilising a race transplanted into the midst of another race. Before attributing a defect of fecundity to the mixed descendants of an immigrant race, we must see whether in the same country the individuals of this race are more prolific in their direct alliances. It is known, for instance, that the Mamelukes, originating from the region of the Caucasus, have never taken root in Egypt, where, nevertheless, from 1250, the epoch of their advent, until 1811, the period of their extermination, their caste has always formed a notable part of the population. They could only maintain themselves by reinforcements which they annually received from the native country, and though not half a century has elapsed since the great massacre of Cairo, there remains no trace of them on the borders of the Nile. Such being the fact, it was concluded therefrom, that the descendants of the Mamelukes and the Egyptians were hybrids of little or no fecundity. Gliddon has thus interpreted it, and Pouchet has accepted that interpretation.²¹ This, however, is not the real cause of the sterility of the Mamelukes in Egypt, and Volney, who, towards the end of the last century, has carefully observed and studied this race, offers the following remarks on them: “Seeing that they have existed in Egypt for centuries, one would be apt to believe that they have reproduced themselves by the ordinary process of breeding; but if their first settlement is a curious fact, their perpetuation is not less so. For five centuries there have been Mamelukes in Egypt, yet not one of them has left a subsisting line: there exists not one family of the second generation, all their children perish in the first or second generation. The Ottomans are nearly in the same condition

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1

Gobineau, Inégalité des Races Humaines, 8vo, Paris, 1855; [also translated into English, On the Inequality of Human Races, and edited by Henry Hotze, 8vo. Editor.]

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2

“The sole action of the laws of Hybridity,” says Nott, “might exterminate the whole human species if all the various types of human beings actually existing on the earth were completely to amalgamate.” Types of Mankind, p. 407, eighth edit., Philadelphia, 1857. Dr. Robert Knox is not less explicit. “I do not believe that any Mulatto race can be maintained beyond the third or fourth generation by Mulattos merely; they must intermarry with the pure races or perish.” Robert Knox, The Races of Men, London, 1850.

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3

Georges Pouchet, De la Pluralité des Races Humaines, p. 140, Paris, 1858. [A translation of this work will shortly be published by the Anthropological Society of London, edited by T. Bendyshe, Esq., M.A., F.A.S.L. Editor.]

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4

Prichard, Natural History of Man.

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5

Davis and Thurnam, Crania Britannica, p. 7, No. 4, London, 1856.

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6

See the voyages of Truter and Somerville (1801), Lichtenstein (1805), Campbell (1813), John Philips (1825), Thompson (1824), etc., in the Collection of Voyages by Walkenaer, t. xv-xxi, Paris, 1842. In 1801 Truter and Somerville found near the Orange or Gariep river, in the district where now Griqua town stands, a horde of Bastaards and Bosjesmen, commanded by a Bastaard of the name of Kok (t. xvii, p. 364). On their return they found a considerable village, composed of Kaffirs, Hottentots, and mongrel breeds of several varieties, under the command of a chief named Kok (p. 393). In the same year Kitchener, the missionary, assembled the horde in a village. There came pure Hottentots and Namaquas (t. xviii, p. 126). In 1802 Anderson, the missionary, in organising the growing nation, gave authority to the Bastaards (p. 127). The village of Laawater or Klaarwater, which has since become Griqua-town, consisted in 1805, when Lichtenstein visited it, of about thirty families, one-half of which belonged to the Bastaard race, the rest were Namaquas or Hottentots. The village enlarged rapidly “by the arrival of refugees, and by marriages with the women of the Bosjesmen and the Koramas, who lived in the vicinity” (t. xix, p. 355). They practised polygamy. “They constituted a horde of nomadic naked savages, living by pillage and the chase; their bodies were besmeared with red paint, the hair covered with grease, living in ignorance, without any trace of civilisation” (p. 356). After the lapse of five years the missionaries commenced civilising them by giving them the taste for agricultural pursuits. The name, however, of Bastaards, which indicated their European origin, was no longer suitable to this nation, in which the African blood was greatly predominating. They took, therefore, the name of Griquas. Campbell asserts that they chose that name, as it was that of the principal family (t. xviii, p. 395). This explanation appears to me very doubtful. Ten Rhyne, who explored Southern Africa in 1673, twenty year after the first disembarkation of Europeans, already mentions the existence of a Hottentot people who went by the name of Gregoriquos (t. xv, p. 122). Thirty years after (1705) Kolbe designates the same people Gauriquas (t. xv, p. 253). There existed at that time another people, called Chirigriquas. In 1775 Thunberg still speaks of Gauriquas (t. xvi, p. 201), and of Chirigriquas. All these names have evidently the same root, and the singularity of Hottentot enunciation induced probably the various travellers to adopt a different orthography. It is thus presumable that the Hottentots of Klaarwater, in calling themselves Griquas, merely adopted the old name Gauriquas. There exists to this day the people Koraquas, signifying “people who wear shoes” (Burchell, t. xx, p. 60). They live in the neighbourhood of Klaarwater. Be this as it may, the new people of the Griquas gave to Klaarwater, influenced by the English missionaries, the name of Griqua-town. This town, called by Malte-Brun Kriqua, grew rapidly by the adjunction of the Koranas. In 1813 there were not less than 1,341 Koranas in a population of 2,607 inhabitants (t. xviii, p. 393). In 1814 the governor of the Cape tried to force the Griquas to furnish men for the indigenous army. The proposal was very badly received, and the nation was nearly in a state of dissolution. A portion of the inhabitants of Griqua-town escaped to the surrounding mountains, and formed bands of robbers, who, under the name of Bergmaars, devastated the country, and, associating with bands of Koranas, pillaged and massacred the Betchouanas and the Bosjesmen, and carried off their women and children. In 1825, owing to the intervention of John Philips, the Bergmaars were reduced to order, and returned to Griqua-town. They had now crossed with the Koranas, the Betchouanas, and Bosjesmen (t. xviii, p. 357). Some time previously a grave dissension had broken out among the settled Griquas. The governor of the Cape had sent an agent, John Melvil, with an important charge to a certain Waterboer, a Bosjesman by origin. The supremacy had hitherto belonged to the family Kok, who, proud of the drops of European blood in their veins, would not recognise the authority of Waterboer, and emigrated accordingly. Waterboer was, however, not dismissed; and in 1825 John Philips found the Griquas divided in three kraals, under the chiefs Kok, Berend, and Waterboer (t. xix, p. 370). If Dr. Prichard had taken the trouble to consult these documents he would have recognised that the Griquas had, by so many consecutive crossings, become almost a pure African race. Modern geographers range therefore the Griquas among the Hottentots, calling them Hottentot-Griquas. It is also noteworthy that Prichard, in citing the Griquas as an example of a mixed race, has given no description of them. In order that the example should be of any value, it is requisite that the Griquas should present an intermediate type between the Europeans and the natives. Neither Dr. Prichard nor any travellers say so. There is another consideration. The origin of the Griqua nation dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Dr. Prichard last speaks of them in 1843. Two generations had not yet elapsed. There is another point. In 1800 the tribe of Kok was a horde but little numerous; in 1824 it was a people of five thousand souls, including seven hundred armed warriors (Thompson, loc. cit., t. xxi, p. 22). It is clear that this people were not descended from the primitive tribe, but had increased by numerous adjunctions. Father Peteam himself, if he were still alive, would be obliged to admit this. I have been very minute as to the Griquas, but I flatter myself that this is sufficient to discard from science the assertion of Prichard, which all modern monogenists have received with so much favour.

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7

Quoy et Gaimard, Observat. sur la constitution physique des Papous, reproduit dans Lesson. Complement des Œuvres de Buffon, t. iii., Paris, 1829.

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8

Domeny de Rienzi, l’Oceanie, t. iii, p. 303. Paris, 1837.

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9

Maury, La terre et l’homme, p. 365. Paris, 1847.

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10

Latham, The Natural History of the Varieties of Man, p. 213. London, 1850. Dr. Latham designates the Malays by the somewhat fantastic name, of Protonesians. There are a great number of neologisms of this kind in his work.

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11

Some geographers say that Waigiou is a large Island; but they give no dimensions. It is, however, scarcely as large as the Island of Majorca. It is of an irregular form, long and narrow; it is about 80 leagues in circumference (Dumont d’Urville in Rienzi, l’Oceanie). It is only 25 leagues long and 10 leagues broad, says Henricy (Histoire de l’Oceanie. Paris, 1845.) The Island of Majorca is only 22 leagues in length by 16 leagues in breadth. Three races united in such a small territory, cannot long remain strangers to each other.

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12

Lesson, loc. cit. t. ii. p. 19.

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13

Davis, Crania Britannica. Introduction, p. 8, note.

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14

These geographical denominations are certainly not irreproachable; they have even the inconvenience of giving rise to the false idea, that all races of the same type originated in the same region; that all the Whites came from the Caucasus, all the Mongolians from Mongolia, the Blacks from Nigritia, even the Van-Diemen islanders. I have, however, thought proper to retain these denominations, as they are generally in use, and have no zoological signification. Such is not the case with the denominations adopted by certain authors derived from the colour of the skin. Thus the Caucasians were termed the white, the Mongolians the yellow, the Ethiopian the black, the Malayo-Polynesian the brown, and finally, the American the red race. It has been shown that the American type alone includes red, brown, black, white and yellow races. There are brown races in the American, and even in the Caucasian type. All the black races do not belong to the Ethiopian type; and finally, the Malayo-Polynesian type comprises races of colours as various as those belonging to the American type. A classification founded on differences of colour would lead to numerous and serious errors.

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15

It is undoubted that several American races have been destroyed within 300 years; others having been reduced to a few families, will soon disappear. The Charruas were exterminated in 1831 by the Spaniards of South America: root and branch, as Dr. Latham says. In 1835, four years later, the English of Van Diemen’s Land, after a horrible massacre, transported 210 Tasmanians, men, women, and children, to a small island (Flinders), in Bass’ Straits. In 1842, after seven years of exile, the number of these unfortunates amounted to 54! This was all that remained of a race which, 40 years previously, occupied the whole of Van Diemen’s Land, as large as Ireland, and we may soon learn that none of them are in existence. The Malays have entirely destroyed the black races who preceded them in certain isles of the great Indian Archipelago. The Guanches now only exit in a mummified state. The black and prognathous race which occupied the isles of Japan before the arrival of the Mongolians, have left no other traces behind than their crania imbedded in the soil; and it is easy to foresee that within one or two centuries all the black races will have disappeared from these parts, and have been succeeded by Malayans and Europeans.

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16

Gerdy, Physiologie Médicale, t. i, p. 290. Paris, 1832.

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17

Berard, Cours de Physiologie, t. i, p. 465. Paris, 1845.

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18

Journal de Physiologie, t. i, p. 120. 1858.

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19

Macedones qui Alexandriam in Ægypto, qui Seleuciam ac Babyloniam, quique alias sparsas per orbem colonias habent in Syros, Parthos, Ægyptos degenerarunt. Tit. L., lib. xxxviii., § 217.

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20

All the Gauls were not light haired; but those who, three centuries before our era, invaded Greece and Asia Minor, were fair haired, according to all testimony; they consequently belonged to the Kimri race.

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21

Gliddon, The Monogenists and the Polygenists. Philadelphia, 1857. George Pouchet, De la Pluralité des races humaines, p. 136. Paris, 1858.

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