ABSTRACT
In 1964 and 1965, the Royal Museum for Central Africa transferred almost its entire ‘anatomical anthropology’ collection to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. Unlike anthropologists today, physical anthropologists in the long nineteenth century mainly dealt with European history and tried to determine permanent races based on physical differences. Hence, physical anthropology was of little practical use to Belgian colonials. In this context, the idea that humanity could be divided in inferior and superior races that was now omnipresent, also outside of physical anthropology served colonialism well. Africans could not be locked in a supposed ‘inferior state’ and rather needed to be susceptible to colonial action and education by ‘superior’ whites. Hence, physical anthropology was of little practical use to Belgian colonials. The history of Belgian physical anthropology has remained largely unstudied. Only a few Belgian scholars have studied the subject that has received only limited attention abroad.
