The Linnean Society of London was delighted to welcome Professor James Moore on 19th March 2009 to speak on “Darwin’s Sacred Cause”.
Professor Moore began his talk, by reading a contemporary narrative, reminiscent of Darwin’s experience of the slave trade in operation whilst on his Beagle voyage in 1832. Professor Moore reflected that due to his family’s involvement in the anti-slavery movement, Darwin had been habituated to anti-slavery propaganda since youth; but only at this point did he face the brutal reality.
Darwin’s family were great supporters of the anti-slavery cause; Darwin’s Aunt Sarah, gave more money than any other female donor to movement and Darwin’s sisters were passionate abolitionists. Erasmus Darwin had also been very much involved, corresponding with Josiah Wedgwood, about the subject. It was, Professor Moore asserted the Unitarians including the Darwins and Wedgewoods who had engaged in the anti-slavery campaign well before the more famous “Anglican Saints”, including William Wilberforce; and Darwin’s family continued to support the Saints with the Wedgwoods pledging large donations to the campaign organised by Thomas Clarkson, founding the Hanley and Shelton Anti-Slavery Association and, through this, distributing large numbers of copies of anti-slavery literature.
Darwin’s first encounter with a former slave, was as an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh. Here, he was taught taxidermy by John Edmonston, a freed Guyanese slave who lived in the same street as Darwin. His interaction with John confirmed Darwin’s belief that white people and black people possessed the same essential humanity. His move to Cambridge – the “spiritual home” of the anti-slavery movement served to underline his anti-slavery thinking.
Following his undergraduate studies at Cambridge, Darwin was asked if he would be interested in joining Captain Robert FitzRoy on a second surveying voyage in the Beagle. Fitzroy had taken command of the vessel on it’s first voyage, following the suicide of the Captain and had returned in 1830, with four captives from Tierra del Fuego. His aim was that they should be Christianised and returned to their homeland as missionaries. Thus, when Darwin joined Fitzroy on the second voyage, they were accompanied by the three surviving Fuegians.
Professor Moore reflected that Darwin’s experiences on The Beagle served to promote two lines of thought; they increased his abhorrence of the slave trade and spurred his thinking about evolution.
Darwin’s first encounters with the slave trade (beyond the printed page) occurred during the Beagle voyage. Whilst in Rio, he was shocked to witness slaves landed on the beach and to see the thumbscrews used for the punishment of female slaves. His views caused considerable friction between himself and Fitzroy. Professor Moore also commented that Darwin’s experiences informed his thinking regarding evolution as he lived alongside the Fuegian captives, observing their transformation into anglicised Christians and then their reversion to their former “wild state” by the time he returned to visit them in Tierra del Fuego in 1834; this prompted the analogy of savage as wild and civilised as domesticated, which spans his work. Darwin also observed the similarities and differences between the Fuegian and the Patagonian races, refusing to accept the latest evolutionary idea that they were unrelated species of the human genus. Both Darwin and Fitzroy, as part of their Christian heritage, believed that all the races were members of the same human family. Others however, were postulating 15 or more species of ape, which had evolved separately into 15 geographically-distinct human species. Although Darwin regarded plural racial origins as abhorrent and immoral, he began to consider some natural explanation for the obvious differences between races.
Hence, soon after the Beagle voyage ended in 1836, Darwin committed himself to an evolutionary origin of species. His experiences led him to a unique image of evolution, not one of parallel linear descent as taught by Lamarckians such as his teacher Dr Robert Grant at the University of Edinburgh, but one of branching common descent. This tree-image united all the races, plant, animal and human alike; and Darwin referred to the arrogance of slave masters for considering black people as an`other kind’ different to themselves. This pluralist viewpoint was defended with great authority in Darwin’s day by the Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz who held that eight human `types’ or species had appeared in different geographical zones as part of a God-ordained creative sequence; all humans were God’s children but the races were intended to be separate and unequal. Others did publish work to counteract this pluralism, especially Dr James Cowles Prichard, whom Darwin read carefully and cited generously. Prichard may have believed in Adam and Eve and Noah’s Flood, but he still argued that the human races had developed naturally, as the products of climate, culture and selective mating.
Professor Moore concluded his talk by discussing Darwin’s production of his seminal work On the Origin of the Species which he began to write in 1856 and was intended to cover human racial origins. His plans to write a book on species were widely known and, a year later, Wallace corresponded with him to ask if he would discuss `man’ in the book; Darwin’s response was No - the subject was surrounded by too much prejudice. The Origin of Species did however bring together his research on the natural production of pigeon races, which he knew was analogous to the making of the human races. And Darwin’wore his morals on his coatsleeve: in the Origin he called slave-making in ants as an “odious instinct”; and in the Descent of Man in 1871 he referred to the “great sin of slavery”. Darwin remained an ardent abolitionist, corresponding with Richard Hill, the first man of colour appointed as a magistrate in Jamaica after the abolition of slavery. Mr Hill specialised in adjudicating between freed slaves and their former owners, and of this Darwin remarked ”I was quite delighted...to hear of all your varied accomplishments and knowledge, and of your higher attributes in the sacred caused of humanity”.