ABSTRACT
In a sense, Charles Darwin’s humanitarianism made him an unlikely convert to racism. His mother, Sussanah, was born a Wedgwood. She was the daughter of the industrialist and abolitionist Josiah Wedgwood. She died when her son Charles was eight, but he was raised among the Wedgwoods as well as the Darwins, and thus he grew up at the centre of the British anti-slavery movement. Abolitionist values ran deep in him. Accordingly, during his voyage on the Beagle (1831-6) when he was in his twenties, Darwin bridled at the pro-slavery opinions of Captain Fitzroy. Furthermore he saw the effects of slavery for himself,1 fi nding Brazil a land of ‘moral debasement’.2 Darwin recalled that before leaving England he had been told that seeing slaves would make him less of an abolitionist. Once he had seen the slaves he wrote that ‘the only alteration I am aware of forming is a much higher estimate of the Negros [sic] character’.3 Yet the fact that Darwin would always hate slavery does not mean that he would reject the idea of physically separate races, as we will see.4 Humanitarians can be racists, too.
