Wha's like us ? Racism and racialisation in the imagination of nineteenth century Scotland

Armstrong, Bruce (1994) Wha's like us ? Racism and racialisation in the imagination of nineteenth century Scotland. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

In Part Two I present a series of analyses of nineteenth century discourses. In Chapters Five and Six my focus is on texts which describe the history, geography and ethnology of Africa. I establish evidence of the prevalence of racist accounts of the continent during the period and argue that the texts exemplify contradictions between different racist ideologies. I also argue that these contradictions are related to a historical shift between two distinctive ways of constructing social collectives.

In Chapter Seven I pursue this argument further through discussion of the nineteenth century discipline of phrenology. I show that Scottish theorists and practitioners of phrenology made a significant contribution to the development of scientific racism, and that the biological determinism which is fundamental to the phrenological project corresponds to a distinctive way of constructing social collectives. I explore the history of the discipline and its relationships to orthodox science and to Christianity in this context.

In Chapter Eight I offer an analysis of some aspects of the significance of racism of the construction of collective categories identifying populations within Scotland. I pursue this analysis in two directions. First, I cite and analyse nineteenth century histories of Scotland which refer to the "racial" composition and "racial" qualities of the population of Scotland. Second, I discuss scholarly and governmental literature which describes the contemporary Irish and Highland populations of nineteenth century Scotland.

In the final chapter I summarise the results of the analyses presented in Chapters Five to Eight, and conclude by drawing out the implications of these results for the problems raised in Part One. I pursue the issue of the construction of Scottish "national identity" through discussion of recent debates concerning nineteenth century Scottish politics and culture, and I suggest that this area could be more fully researched by taking account of the significance of imperialism and racism.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: J Political Science > JA Political science (General); D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Sociology Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences
• Supervisor's Name: Miles, Bob
• Date of Award: 1994
• Depositing User: Elaine Ballantyne
• Unique ID: glathesis:1994-1766
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 04 May 2010
• Last Modified: 10 Dec 2012 13:46
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/1766