Final Report Summary - RACIALISM ("Racial thinking and relevant sciences in East-Central Europe in the decades around 1900")
My research project explored the history of racial thinking and the related biological, human and social sciences focused on the in this respect mostly uncharted region of East Central Europe, the Hungarian Kingdom (which covers areas now belonging besides Hungary to Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, and successor states of Yugoslavia). The timeframe of the investigation was the period beginning with the 1867 Austro-Hungarian political compromise and ending in 1918 with the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire. Rooted in the ethnically and confessionally most mixed region of contemporary Europe, Hungarian sciences faced unique intellectual challenges in the process of constructing and exploiting racial theories and creating ethnic, national and imperial identities with the aim to contribute to the agenda of Hungarian nation-building, involving in many ways clearly imperial designs.
I conducted systematic research on a wide variety of disciplines, including ethnography, physical anthropology, criminal and social statistics, biology, public health, eugenics, psychiatry, sociology and geography. The study was extended over their institutional setting (including: the Hungarian Ethnographic Society, the National Archaeological and Anthropological Society, the Anthropology Department and Museum, the National Museum, the Royal Medical Association of Budapest, the National Public Health Society, the Sociological Society, the Racial Hygiene Committee, the Hungarian Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy, the Geographic Society, the Turanian Society, etc.), learned journals (including: Twentieth Century, Sociological Review, Anthropological Notes, Ethnographia, A Cél, Turán, Health, Medical Weekly, Medicine, etc.), research agendas and major intellectual achievements of scientists and practitioners concerned together with their political and ideological positions. A wide range of relevant issues were explored and analysed in depth. They included among some other publicly debated theories those related to ethnic and national origins, the affiliations of the Hungarian language, the image of Hungary as “Europe in miniature”, the problem of the „Magyar face”; the 1896 Hungarian Millennium Exhibition; major population surveys, craniometric and other anthropometric measurements, investigation of the eye, hair and skin colour, scientific conceptions of evolution and heredity; the question of degeneration, the influence of social Darwinism, Weismann’s germ plasm theory, Mendel’s laws of heredity, neo-Malthusiansism, Spencer’s work, the concepts of Volk, the Aryan myth, Gumplovicz’s conflict theory, Kropotkin’s ‘mutual aid’ theory, reception of British eugenics and biometry and German racial hygiene.
The findings of the project generally support my original hypothesis, namely, that the disciplinary trajectories of Hungarian ‘sciences of race’ diverged from the models offered by their British, French and German counterparts. A marked and overall shift towards a biological, hierarchical, and racialist thinking did not seem to have taken place in the Hungarian scientific field before the end of WWI. This seems to be in line with the strategy of more or less forceful assimilation followed by the Hungarian State throughout the period. As a form of ‘internal colonization’, assimilation necessitated integrative, rather than stigmatising or exclusionary strategies. Assimilation also ran counter to the precepts of the myth of racial purity, which saw it as a source of racial degeneration and thus a menace to the would-be nation.
The ethnographic resources suggest that, overall, Hungarian ethnography built on an essentially cultural definition of ethnicity and race and employed a holistic approach to the human being and to the nation. While there were voices stressing Magyar hegemony, this cultural understanding of ethnicity seems to have left little space for biology and any form of crude racism or ethnocentrism. Furthermore, if social Darwinism was present in some areas of public and political discourse, it did not take a strong foothold in ethnographic thinking during the period observed.
The analysis of the anthropological findings suggests that, unlike in other countries, no new generation of Darwinist anthropologists (with a more dynamic biological approach) emerged and no marked shift towards racial thinking occurred in Hungary in the pre-WWI years. Hungarian physical anthropology faced special problems in defining race and racial purity and failed to accomplish its nationalist project of defining the Magyar types (or finding pure racial forms) in the observed period. The anthropological and ethnographic material therefore demonstrate the success of the ‘imperial’ project stressing and familiarizing the racially/ethnically diverse and mixed nature of the Kingdom. It was integrative, rather than exclusionary and, crucially enough, it left the door open for cultural assimilation.
Concerning the early history of eugenics in Hungary, this movement seems to have been little interested with ethnic/racial issues. Eugenics drew followers from a wide political spectrum, had a strong sociological impact and offered practical orientation in applying eugenics as a possible remedy to social problems. Those active in the movement were primarily preoccupied with social engineering particularly in the field of public health (such as alcoholism, mother and infant mortality and morbidity, situation of war orphans, sexually transmitted contagious diseases, etc.). They generally avoided drawing ethnic issues into the eugenic agenda. Thus, in the observed period, mainstream Hungarian eugenics was not racist, and did not map ethnic differences hierarchically. Finally, dominant Hungarian eugenicists mostly shared critical views of widespread contemporary theories of German superiority and similarly extremist manifestations of racial thinking.
The study of geography which, together with other disciplines, also formed the scientific backbone of the ill-reputed Turanian movement in the first half of the 20th century, linking the Magyars to the Ural-Altaic Asian peoples, demonstrates that early-20th century geography fulfilled important political roles that were connected to questions of race and ethnicity in intricate ways. In order to counteract the more racist use of the Turanian idea by certain social actors in the public realm, influential geographers in 1917-18 insisted on the fact that the “Turán” was not a racial or linguistic, but a geographic concept. This race concept of key geographers resonated with the cultural ethnographic definition of race prevalent in the era’s scientific thinking more than with any biological race definition. My research also suggests that racist and anti-Semitic approaches were not prevalent within the scholarly branch of the Turanian movement in the years prior to WWI, in stark contrast to the post-Paris Peace Concference situation. Racist elements of the Turanian racial myths and the idea of race protection started to proliferate only after the collapse of the Monarchy in 1918.
Finally, the issue of ethnicity was sometimes present in scholarly debates precisely with its curious absence. For instance, the choice of the “geographic principle” (rather than the “ethnic principle”) and the “greater landschaft theory” by Hungarian geographers, mobilized for the preparation for the Peace Talks, enabled them to offer a powerful scientific rationale for the integrity and the social, economic and cultural interconnectedness of ethnic groups in the Carpathian Basin (a scheme destined to support the preservation of the earlier political unity of the Hungarian Kingdom).
Due to the originality of the research and its interdisciplinary nature, the project enriches not only to the historiography of European “racial sciences” and science studies in general, but also the fields of nationalism and imperialism studies, the cultural and social studies of fin-de-siècle modernity in Central Europe, and the wider scholarship on the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In addition to an immediate academic readership including both scholars and students, the project also raises issues that are relevant, informative and thought-provoking for policy makers, politicians, and members of the lay public who are interested in the potential roots or precedents of certain contemporary social issues, especially as to processes of the multi-ethnic migrations and demographic mixing in the European Union. The history of racial thinking in East Central Europe in the period leading up to the cataclysmic 20th century may provide an understanding of the complex relationship between (multi-)ethnicity, nationalism, and supranational political structures that proves to be crucial in facing problems in contemporary Europe as well, which was meant to be ‘postnational’, politically united and ‘morally’ integrated. These include the rise of anti-Roma sentiments and the reappearance of obsolete forms of anti-Semitism in the West since the 1990s, just like the more culturally and religiously informed anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe following the fall of the Iron Curtain. With the benefit of hindsight, some of the essential references of this recent development may go back to the period under scrutiny and, specifically, to the disintegration of some of the multi-ethnic nation states created after the fall of the Habsburg Empire.
Finally, certain aspects of my research on topics related to heredity and eugenic health policies also have considerable relevance regarding ethical and scientific issues surrounding current biomedical investigations, thus linking this historical problem area to questions emerging in current policy-making and social attitudes.
I conducted systematic research on a wide variety of disciplines, including ethnography, physical anthropology, criminal and social statistics, biology, public health, eugenics, psychiatry, sociology and geography. The study was extended over their institutional setting (including: the Hungarian Ethnographic Society, the National Archaeological and Anthropological Society, the Anthropology Department and Museum, the National Museum, the Royal Medical Association of Budapest, the National Public Health Society, the Sociological Society, the Racial Hygiene Committee, the Hungarian Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy, the Geographic Society, the Turanian Society, etc.), learned journals (including: Twentieth Century, Sociological Review, Anthropological Notes, Ethnographia, A Cél, Turán, Health, Medical Weekly, Medicine, etc.), research agendas and major intellectual achievements of scientists and practitioners concerned together with their political and ideological positions. A wide range of relevant issues were explored and analysed in depth. They included among some other publicly debated theories those related to ethnic and national origins, the affiliations of the Hungarian language, the image of Hungary as “Europe in miniature”, the problem of the „Magyar face”; the 1896 Hungarian Millennium Exhibition; major population surveys, craniometric and other anthropometric measurements, investigation of the eye, hair and skin colour, scientific conceptions of evolution and heredity; the question of degeneration, the influence of social Darwinism, Weismann’s germ plasm theory, Mendel’s laws of heredity, neo-Malthusiansism, Spencer’s work, the concepts of Volk, the Aryan myth, Gumplovicz’s conflict theory, Kropotkin’s ‘mutual aid’ theory, reception of British eugenics and biometry and German racial hygiene.
The findings of the project generally support my original hypothesis, namely, that the disciplinary trajectories of Hungarian ‘sciences of race’ diverged from the models offered by their British, French and German counterparts. A marked and overall shift towards a biological, hierarchical, and racialist thinking did not seem to have taken place in the Hungarian scientific field before the end of WWI. This seems to be in line with the strategy of more or less forceful assimilation followed by the Hungarian State throughout the period. As a form of ‘internal colonization’, assimilation necessitated integrative, rather than stigmatising or exclusionary strategies. Assimilation also ran counter to the precepts of the myth of racial purity, which saw it as a source of racial degeneration and thus a menace to the would-be nation.
The ethnographic resources suggest that, overall, Hungarian ethnography built on an essentially cultural definition of ethnicity and race and employed a holistic approach to the human being and to the nation. While there were voices stressing Magyar hegemony, this cultural understanding of ethnicity seems to have left little space for biology and any form of crude racism or ethnocentrism. Furthermore, if social Darwinism was present in some areas of public and political discourse, it did not take a strong foothold in ethnographic thinking during the period observed.
The analysis of the anthropological findings suggests that, unlike in other countries, no new generation of Darwinist anthropologists (with a more dynamic biological approach) emerged and no marked shift towards racial thinking occurred in Hungary in the pre-WWI years. Hungarian physical anthropology faced special problems in defining race and racial purity and failed to accomplish its nationalist project of defining the Magyar types (or finding pure racial forms) in the observed period. The anthropological and ethnographic material therefore demonstrate the success of the ‘imperial’ project stressing and familiarizing the racially/ethnically diverse and mixed nature of the Kingdom. It was integrative, rather than exclusionary and, crucially enough, it left the door open for cultural assimilation.
Concerning the early history of eugenics in Hungary, this movement seems to have been little interested with ethnic/racial issues. Eugenics drew followers from a wide political spectrum, had a strong sociological impact and offered practical orientation in applying eugenics as a possible remedy to social problems. Those active in the movement were primarily preoccupied with social engineering particularly in the field of public health (such as alcoholism, mother and infant mortality and morbidity, situation of war orphans, sexually transmitted contagious diseases, etc.). They generally avoided drawing ethnic issues into the eugenic agenda. Thus, in the observed period, mainstream Hungarian eugenics was not racist, and did not map ethnic differences hierarchically. Finally, dominant Hungarian eugenicists mostly shared critical views of widespread contemporary theories of German superiority and similarly extremist manifestations of racial thinking.
The study of geography which, together with other disciplines, also formed the scientific backbone of the ill-reputed Turanian movement in the first half of the 20th century, linking the Magyars to the Ural-Altaic Asian peoples, demonstrates that early-20th century geography fulfilled important political roles that were connected to questions of race and ethnicity in intricate ways. In order to counteract the more racist use of the Turanian idea by certain social actors in the public realm, influential geographers in 1917-18 insisted on the fact that the “Turán” was not a racial or linguistic, but a geographic concept. This race concept of key geographers resonated with the cultural ethnographic definition of race prevalent in the era’s scientific thinking more than with any biological race definition. My research also suggests that racist and anti-Semitic approaches were not prevalent within the scholarly branch of the Turanian movement in the years prior to WWI, in stark contrast to the post-Paris Peace Concference situation. Racist elements of the Turanian racial myths and the idea of race protection started to proliferate only after the collapse of the Monarchy in 1918.
Finally, the issue of ethnicity was sometimes present in scholarly debates precisely with its curious absence. For instance, the choice of the “geographic principle” (rather than the “ethnic principle”) and the “greater landschaft theory” by Hungarian geographers, mobilized for the preparation for the Peace Talks, enabled them to offer a powerful scientific rationale for the integrity and the social, economic and cultural interconnectedness of ethnic groups in the Carpathian Basin (a scheme destined to support the preservation of the earlier political unity of the Hungarian Kingdom).
Due to the originality of the research and its interdisciplinary nature, the project enriches not only to the historiography of European “racial sciences” and science studies in general, but also the fields of nationalism and imperialism studies, the cultural and social studies of fin-de-siècle modernity in Central Europe, and the wider scholarship on the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In addition to an immediate academic readership including both scholars and students, the project also raises issues that are relevant, informative and thought-provoking for policy makers, politicians, and members of the lay public who are interested in the potential roots or precedents of certain contemporary social issues, especially as to processes of the multi-ethnic migrations and demographic mixing in the European Union. The history of racial thinking in East Central Europe in the period leading up to the cataclysmic 20th century may provide an understanding of the complex relationship between (multi-)ethnicity, nationalism, and supranational political structures that proves to be crucial in facing problems in contemporary Europe as well, which was meant to be ‘postnational’, politically united and ‘morally’ integrated. These include the rise of anti-Roma sentiments and the reappearance of obsolete forms of anti-Semitism in the West since the 1990s, just like the more culturally and religiously informed anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe following the fall of the Iron Curtain. With the benefit of hindsight, some of the essential references of this recent development may go back to the period under scrutiny and, specifically, to the disintegration of some of the multi-ethnic nation states created after the fall of the Habsburg Empire.
Finally, certain aspects of my research on topics related to heredity and eugenic health policies also have considerable relevance regarding ethical and scientific issues surrounding current biomedical investigations, thus linking this historical problem area to questions emerging in current policy-making and social attitudes.