Monogenism - Environmentalist Monogenism

Environmentalist Monogenism

Environmentalist monogenism describes a theory current in the first half of the nineteenth century, in particular, according to which there was a single human origin, but that subsequent migration of groups of humans had subjected them to different environmental conditions.

Environmentalism in this sense was found in the writings of Samuel Stanhope Smith. The theory stated that perceived differences, such as human skin color, were therefore products of history. A proponent of this approach to monogenism was James Cowles Prichard. It was discussed in the context of the knowledge of the time of historical linguistics.

Prichard died in 1848; in 1850 Robert Knox published his The Races of Man: A Fragment, arguing for the intrinsic physical and mental characteristics of races. In terms of its influence, it was a major statement of the anti-environmentalist and polygenist case on race and origins. In The Effect of Circumstances upon the Physical Man (1854) Frederick Douglass argued for an environmentalist monogenism, following Prichard, Bachman, and Robert Gordon Latham, but also in the tradition of Hosea Easton and James McCune Smith. For Douglass, monogenesis was closely related to egalitarianism and his politics of black humanity.