Introduction

Although several reform Darwinists were pacifists opposed to international armed conflict, most of them still believed that some form of competition – usually economic – would continue to govern inter-state relationships. What distinguishes the thinkers to be examined in this chapter is that, first, they made conflict between nations and races the central focus of their publications, and second, they regarded this conflict as ultimately violent, carrying the threat of national or racial extermination. Given the salience of the notion of ‘race’ in these texts, it is necessary to examine briefly some of its connotations.

Race was a widely used concept by the middle of the nineteenth century. It could designate an organic sub-species or variety, as in the sub-title of the Origin, or a human group. In instances of the second usage, it could be applied to humanity as a whole or to a combination of nationalities (e.g. the ‘European race’), or to an individual nation (e.g. the ‘English race’). Additionally, race was used to describe a group characterised by distinctive physical (and, invariably, psychological) traits, as in ‘Celtic’ ‘Aryan’ or ‘Negroid’ races. Such groups were often hierarchically arranged according to a scale of physical, mental or moral value. In some theories, those forming the subject of this chapter, the ‘fact’ that certain races were superior to others meant that relations between races assumed vital importance to an understanding of history and culture. In many cases, theorists tended to use the terms ‘nation’ and ‘race’ as broadly interchangeable, or to regard nations as embodiments of distinctive racial (i.e. physical and psychological) attributes.