Racism In The 19th Century Essay

Racism has been a huge problem over the centuries. Despite slavery being abolished in the nineteenth century, the general consensus of inferiority has been within the human race for all this time. However, not everyone had obtained this particular mindset. Towards the middle and later eighteenth century, there were in fact liberal thinkers that felt that the mindset that almost everyone contained in that time was a crime against humanity itself. In fact, there were even paintings made to represent that what everyone was thinking was not the right thing to think at all. As time moved on, there began to be even more believers of this idea, such as prime ministers who believed that the idea of liberalism should be spread across Europe. But during
Wilhelm Schallmayer, a German physician wrote in his essay “Heredity and Selection in the Life History of Nations” in 1903 that further explained this theory. Consequently, he said that the main source of the problem was “competition.” Therefore, it makes “some nations and races powerful and brings other, backward nations and races into decline.” On the whole, he explained that the Europeans were basically the poison that destroys the villages of tribes just because they felt the need to display their superiority. Another man, Evelyn Baring, the British ruler of Egypt from 1883 to 1907 further explained these ideas. Because he lived in a region with a backward society, he was able to experience firsthand the behavior of the White man and the inferior race. He explained that the Egyptian was “a skillfully constructed automaton [who] may do a great deal of work.” In this one line alone, he displays the idea that the inferior nation isn’t supposed to be depicted to be how they are and instead they are faithful and loyal to those who treat them with respect. These two men were what the world needed at the time, as they further helped to change the minds who were still stuck in the earlier time