ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the emergence of a range of different conceptions of race over the long-nineteenth century. As a variety of disciplines and discourses took up the task of delineating the dynamics of the social world from those of the natural world, the category of race emerged as a point of contact and, consequently, as a point of especially intense disputation. These disputes over the nature of race shaped discussions about the processes of medical diagnosis, the nature of British citizenship, the shape and authority of newly professionalized social science disciplines like anthropology, and the political strategies of abolitionism.
