Ernst Haeckel, Nikolai Miklucho-Maclay and the racial controversy over the Papuans

Abstract

Abstract Background The “German Darwin” Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a key figure during the first “Darwinian revolution“, a time when the foundations of the modern evolutionary theory were laid. It was Haeckel, who crucially contributed to the visualization of the Darwinian theory by designing “genealogical-trees” illustrating the evolution of various species, including humans. Although the idea of explaining human evolution by natural selection belongs to Darwin, Haeckel was the first who attempted to create a new exact anthropology based on the Darwinian method. Discussion Trying to immediately reconstruct human evolution proceeding from the description of modern populations led Haeckel to the views which, from the contemporary perspective, are definitely racist. Haeckel created racial anthropology intending to prove human origins from a lower organism, but without the intention of establishing a discriminatory racial praxis. Although hierarchical in its outcome, the Haeckelian method did not presuppose the necessity of a racial hierarchy of currently living humans. It is crucial to grasp in what sense Haeckel’s theoretical explorations in human evolution were racist, and in what sense they were not. Our argument flows as follows. One of Haeckel’s pupils was the Russian ethnographer, anthropologist and zoologist Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Miklucho-Maclay (1846–1888). Maclay and Haeckel worked closely together for several years; they traveled jointly and Maclay had enough time to learn the major methodological principles of Haeckel’s research. Yet in contrast to Haeckel, Maclay is regarded as one of the first scientific anti-racists, who came to anti-racist views using empirical field studies in Papua-New Guinea. Conclusions We claim that while conducting these studies Maclay applied scientific principles to a significant extent acquired from Haeckel. The paper contributes to the view that Haeckel’s theoretical racism did not follow the Darwinian method he used.