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Labeling People
Nineteenth-century French scholars, during a turbulent era of revolution and industrialization, ranked intelligence and character according to facial profile, skin colour, and head shape. They believed that such indicators could determine whether individuals were educable and peoples perfectible. In Labeling People Martin Staum examines the Paris societies of phrenology (reading intelligence and character by head shapes), geography, and ethnology and their techniques for classifying people. He shows how the work of these social scientists gave credence to the arrangement of races in a hierarchy, the domination of non-European peoples, and the limitation of opportunities for ill-favoured indi...
Ptolemy's Africa
Ptolemy's map of Africa dates from the 2nd century AD. And for a long time it was thought that the Alexandrian geographer knew well the greater part of the continent, for it was only south of the equator that his information became scarce. But then, in 1863, the French geographer Vivien de Saint-Martin came to the conclusion that the Sudan - interpreted here as the area between the Sahara and the rain forest - had remained unknown to the Classical world. Even Ptolemy had no idea what it looked like there or which people lived there.To cover up his ignorance Ptolemy had put his rivers, peoples and towns far south of where they really belonged. And that is what historians believe up to this ve...
