Savages and Civilisation

Taking in the works of a vast array of thinkers in the late- and post-Enlightenment era, Mark Francis charts the ideas and intellectual contentions of the men who coined ideas on savages during the height of the British Empire’s expansion. These political economists, demographers, archaeologists and anthropologists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were all keen proponents of the theory of progress, rejected social contract theory and were focussed on discovering the origins of civil and political society. The indigenous peoples of the New World provided a counterfactual for their ideas, and the ensuing debates and theoretical discussions were to go on to provide an ideological toolkit for racism and repression in the colonies.The consequences of these works have cast a long shadow, and yet there has been little serious engagement with the works that continue to stratify society long after empires. Francis’s analysis of these intellectuals and their ideas spans almost two centuries, and takes in the actions and ideas of explorers, administrators, missionaries and navy personnel employed in the growing empire. He provides an unrivalled scholarly intervention in the history of intellectual thought and valuable systematic correctives to misconceived interpretations of ideas of savagery and advances to civilisation.