ABSTRACT
Salisbury claimed that the living nations would inevitably ‘encroach’ upon the territory of the dying nations, and that disputes about ‘curing or cutting up these unfortunate patients’ might provoke war among the great powers. Salisbury’s speech has frequently been discussed in the same breath as ‘social Darwinism’ – an oversimplified and overused term that signifies, essentially, a belief that the principles of biology apply to human affairs and international relations; that struggle is a natural and beneficial process; and that the destruction of the weak is an inevitable aspect of survival of the ‘fittest’, those best adapted to their environment. The health of the body politic might have a bidirectional causal relationship with the bodily health of its citizens. Since history began, people have tried to divine the determinants of the rise and fall of tribes, kingdoms and empires.
