The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815–1914 (The Penguin History of Europe Book 7)

by Richard J. Evans

Different races were no longer depicted as equal in the sight of God, sharing a common humanity, if at an earlier stage of historical development than that of the Victorian Englishman. Instead, textbooks now emphasized racial difference and the alleged racial inferiority of subject peoples: ‘The Australian natives are an ugly, unprepossessing people, with degrading and filthy habits’, as one geography textbook put it: ‘Like beasts of prey . . . the Malays are always on the watch, to assuage their thirst of blood and plunder’; ‘The tribes [of Nigeria] . . . are extremely savage, practising horrible forms of religion, accompanied by human sacrifices.’ In such circumstances, it now seemed to be agreed, rule by the British was morally justifiable as well as politically necessary. The

Belief in racial hierarchies based on descent had become more widespread once it had become possible to lend it scientific legitimacy. This was not least a product of the growing influence of Darwinism in the second half of the century.

For their part, German nationalists started to think of the French as racially degenerate, not least because of the slow pace of French population growth. The German sense of superiority was rudely challenged in 1912 when an official report revealed that the German birth rate had started to decline as well.