Anthropology and the British Empire

The rise of the modern empires threw Europeans into contact with exotic peoples and environments on an unprecedented scale. The bewildering diversity presented interpretive challenges without parallel. This chapter examines the emergence of a field of enquiry, sometimes known as the ‘science of man’, which began to prosper in Britain and its colonies in the nineteenth century. While the rise of anthropology represented an international phenomenon, the origins and development of the discipline within the British Empire are the focus here. In the process of uncovering this history, we must engage with a subject even more imposing: the symbiotic relationship between the growth of science and the modern empires. This is one of the reasons why the formation of anthropology as a modern social science is pertinent to historians of empire. In the wake of Michel Foucault, scholars have come to recognise the potent and highly politicised nexus between knowledge and power, which so affected the nation-states and modern juridical systems. By attending to the history of anthropology, we can see how the types of power–knowledge relationship that so defined the European world were transferred to indigenous societies through colonial subjugation.