In the late nineteenth century, Europeans and North Americans watched their societies acquire colonies all over the world. Conscripting Darwin and Malthus, many people in these places concluded that these triumphs reflected the white race’s innate superiority. All human groups had distinct, heritable physical and mental characters, they said. Some were better than others, and groups with better characters had won the struggle for existence. Racial superiority, these people claimed, was why Europe had colonized Asia and Africa, and not the other way around.
