Colour, Class, and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-nineteenth Century"The middle decades of the nineteenth century saw a subtle yet significant change in English racial attitudes. The widespread sympathy for the plight of the oppressed blacks aroused by the anti-slavery movement did not simply decline: the prevailing temper came to express a new harsh racism which condemned blacks as inherently inferior to whites. This study examines the reasons for this transition by exploring a new range of sources including the experience of blacks in Victorian England and the origins of a derogatory stereotype of the Negro within the popular culture. This evidence demonstrates that the Victorians perceived blacks as a social as well as a racial group: in fact, comparisons of race and class typified the mid-Victorian discussion of race and slavery. Professor Latimer finds that the sources of mid-Victorian racism lay not simply in a direct response to the proponents of scientific racism, nor to the overseas needs of empire, but in the changing social and political climate of mid-Victorian England itself. The perception of colour remained constant, but as perceptions of class shifted, so Victorian racism intensified." -- |
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
the Black Experience | 21 |
Black Gentlemen and the MidVictorians | 45 |
Copyright | |
8 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
abolitionists African American Civil American Civil War Anthropological Society Anti-Slavery Reporter Anti-Slavery Society BL Add.MSS Britain British and Foreign Brougham Charles Charles Kingsley Christian Church Missionary Society claimed Cobden colonial colour commentators critics defenders discrimination emancipation England English society Englishmen Ethnological European Evangelical ex-slaves Eyre's Foreign Anti-Slavery Society fugitive gentlemen Gladstone Governor Eyre History Hunt's Huxley Papers ibid inferior insurrection Jamaica Committee James Hunt JASL John July Kingsley L. A. Chamerovzow labour lecturers mid-Victorian middle class minstrel missions moral Morning Herald natural Negro nineteenth century observed opinion passim philanthropic philanthropists political polygenists popular prejudice racial attitudes racism radical respectable Review Russell Saturday Rev savage scientific racists Sept servants servile slave trade social Society of London status stereotype Stowe T. H. Huxley Tyndall Uncle Tom's Cabin Victorian Wallace West Indian West Indies William Wells Brown