William Z. Ripley William Zebina Ripley (October 13, 1867 – August 16, 1941) was an American economist, lecturer at Columbia University, professor of economics at MIT, professor of political economy at Harvard University, and racial anthropologist. Ripley was fa ...

published in 1899 ''The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study'', which grew out of a series of lectures he gave at the Lowell Institute at Columbia in 1896. Ripley believed that

race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...

was critical to understanding human history, though his work afforded environmental and non-biological factors, such as traditions, a strong weight as well. He believed, as he wrote in the introduction to ''The Races of Europe'', that: :''"Race, properly speaking, is responsible only for those peculiarities, mental or bodily, which are transmitted with constancy along the lines of direct physical descent from father to son. Many mental traits, aptitudes, or proclivities, on the other hand, which reappear persistently in successive populations may be derived from an entirely different source. They may have descended collaterally, along the lines of purely mental suggestion by virtue of mere social contact with preceding generations."'' While not substantiating this claim, Ripley writes on page 119 that a child's

eye color Eye color is a polygenic phenotypic character determined by two distinct factors: the pigmentation of the eye's iris and the frequency-dependence of the scattering of light by the turbid medium in the stroma of the iris. In humans, the ...

favors the eye color of the father and writes regarding the overall influence of paternal descent: :''"One law alone, to which we have already made reference, seems to be verified. It is this; viz., that types, which are combinations of separate traits, are rarely if ever stable in a single line through several generations. The physical characteristics are transmitted in independence of one another in nine cases out of ten. The absolute necessity of studying men in large masses, in order to counteract this tendency is by this fact rendered imperative."'' Ripley's book, written to help finance his children's education, became very well respected in anthropology, renowned for its careful writing and careful compilation (and criticism) of the data of many other anthropologists in Europe and the United States. Ripley based his conclusions about race by correlating

anthropometric Anthropometry () refers to the measurement of the human individual. An early tool of physical anthropology, it has been used for identification, for the purposes of understanding human physical variation, in paleoanthropology and in various atte ...

data with geographical data, paying special attention to the use of the cephalic index, which at the time was considered a well-established measure. From this and other socio-geographical factors, Ripley classified Europeans into three distinct races: # '' Teutonic'' – members of the northern race were long-skulled (or dolichocephalic), tall in stature, and possessed pale hair, eyes and skin. # ''

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...

'' – members of the southern race were long-skulled (or dolichocephalic), short/medium in stature, and possessed dark hair, eyes and skin. # ''

Alpine Alpine may refer to any mountainous region. It may also refer to: Places Europe * Alps, a European mountain range ** Alpine states, which overlap with the European range Australia * Alpine, New South Wales, a Northern Village * Alpine National Pa ...

'' – members of the central race were round-skulled (or brachycephalic), stocky in stature, and possessed intermediate hair, eye and skin color. Ripley's tripartite system of race put him at odds both with others on the topic of human difference, including those who insisted that there was only one European race, and those who insisted that there were at least ten European races (such as

Joseph Deniker Joseph Deniker (russian: Иосиф Егорович Деникер, ''Yosif Yegorovich Deniker''; 6 March 1852, in Astrakhan – 18 March 1918, in Paris) was a Russian and French naturalist and anthropologist, known primarily for his attempts t ...

, whom Ripley saw as his chief rival). The conflict between Ripley and Deniker was criticized by

Jan Czekanowski Jan Czekanowski (October 8, 1882, Głuchów – July 20, 1965, Szczecin) was a Polish anthropologist, statistician, ethnographer, traveller, and linguist. His scientific contributions include introducing his system of racial classification and fou ...

, who states that "the great discrepancies between their claims decrease the authority of anthropology", and what is more, he points out that both Deniker and Ripley had one common feature, as they both omitted the existence of an ''

Armenoid race The Armenoid race was a supposed sub-race in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism. The Armenoid race was variously described (depending ...

'', which Czekanowski claimed to be one of the four main races of Europe, met especially among the Eastern Europeans and Southern Europeans. Ripley was the first American recipient of the

Huxley Memorial Medal The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is a long-established anthropological organisation, and Learned Society, with a global membership. Its remit includes all the component fields of anthropology, such as biolo ...

of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1908 on account of his contributions to anthropology. ''The Races of Europe'', overall, became an influential book of the

Progressive Era The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. The main themes ended during Am ...

in the field of racial taxonomy. Ripley's tripartite system was especially championed by

Madison Grant Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) was an American lawyer, zoologist, anthropologist, and writer known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist, and as an advocate of scientific racism. Grant is less noted f ...

, who changed Ripley's "Teutonic" type into Grant's own Nordic type (taking the name, but little else, from Deniker), which he postulated as a

master race The master race (german: Herrenrasse) is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative " Aryan race" is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as "''Herrenmenschen''" ("master humans"). T ...

.Matthew Press Guterl, ''The Color of Race in America, 1900-1940'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), and Jonathan P. Spiro, "Patrician racist: The evolution of Madison Grant" (Ph.D dissertation, Dept. of History, University of California, Berkeley, 2000). It is in this light that Ripley's work on race is usually remembered today, though little of Grant's ideology is present in Ripley's original work. In 1933, the Harvard anthropologist Carleton S. Coon was invited to write a new edition of Ripley's 1899 book, which Coon dedicated to Ripley. Coon's entirely rewritten version of the book was published in 1939.

References

External links

The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (1899)
by William Zebina Ripley at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Races of Europe, The 1899 books Anthropology books Books about Europe Scientific racism Books about race and ethnicity

See also

References

External links