ABSTRACT
In the received historical image, such as it is, British Psychology from 1913 to 1940 is pervasively racist,1 primarily because of the deep Galtonian roots and eugenic connections of its strong psychometric tradition. With Britain as the world’s greatest imperial power, it is also perhaps taken for granted that most British Psychology must have been implicitly racist. Since the 1898 Cambridge Torres Straits Expedition, which initiated professional Psychological racedifference research, was also British we might again expect a continuing interest in the topic. In this chapter I examine how far the evidence justifies this image. First the presence of racial topics of a psychological kind in the eugenics literature is assessed. Secondly the positions of the Cambridge School psychologists (W.H.R. Rivers, Frederic Bartlett and C.S.Myers) are discussed. Thirdly the positions of William McDougall and R.B.Cattell are considered. Fourthly I identify the main race-related themes tackled in British Psychological journals, text-books and other genres before, finally, addressing the implications of all this.
