Eugenics in the Making: Human Typologies, Population Hygiene, and Racial Science in the 18th Century

By the 19th Century, the European public had been engaging in scientific debate for decades, gathering exotic curiosities, and energetically pursuing the secrets of life. At the same time, they enslaved millions of Africans, profited from the exploitation of their labor, along with that of American Indians and Chinese coolies, and built a hierarchy of human biology, putting themselves at the top. This episode demonstrates how fuzzy the line was, and still is, between science and sexuality, classification and domination, investigation and exploitation, public health policy and genocidal violence. This week, in episode one of our Eugenics series, we will identify 18c antecedents to eugenics such as public sanitation, population hygiene, hereditary science, and human typologies in order to understand the powerful impulses under-girding modern eugenics.

Find show notes and transcripts here. 

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