Imperialism Blog post

The misapplication of science that conflated genetic and cultural pattern was a notable influence in colonial ideation. The Lamarckian hypothesis (the inheritance of acquired traits, disproved empirically) for example was mirrored in the concept of the "degenerate European" (in the second Stoler article) being unable after a certain amount of acclimation to produce "full-blooded" European offspring, and eugenic arguments piggybacked off this. At the same time though, moral appeals also affected how Europeans viewed non-Europeans, as in the "injustice" represented by the fabricated harem. Since the European view of "inferior" cultures was informed by both false moral and false scientific data, it was possible for a fully consistent worldview to be created at odds with reality.

Of course, a major problem with this worldview was that the racial divisions ignored the existence of lower class whites and mixed-race people, who very manifestly didn't fall in with the worldview. The fear of those two groups was a defining feature of middle class politics toward the end of the era, and considering the importance of labor movements in European upheavals along with the importance of dual-race people in independence struggles from Latin America to India that fear was reasonable.