Statistics was initially used as a tool to understanding the present state of European society
so that power structures could make optimum use of resources during times of crisis and, in the case of Britain, as an attempt to avoid the societal unrest that dominated Europe during the first half of the 19th century. "Statistics, by their very name, are defined to be the observations necessary to the social and moral sciences, to the sciences of the statist, to whom the statesman and the legislator must resort for the principles on which to legislate and govern." Thus, at the turn of the century, statistics were used to accommodate manpower demands for the armies to fight the continental war against Napoleon and later during the 1830s, as a part of an attempt to control the population and avoid the turmoil that had engulfed the European mainland. Initially, statisticians confined their activities to the collection of raw data that was then used by others to form or confirm social theories. However, there was a desire on the part of statists to go further and to ground there new science on the same sort of constant that the universal law of gravity had provided for astronomy. This inspired the French statistician Quetelet to formulate a model of probability that he believed would give social scientists that same grounding.
Henry Thomas Buckle took this idea one step further. He believed that it was possible to gain access to the rules that operate the human mind through the use of statistics. Moreover, it was Buckle's belief that all human behavior was caused by unvarying social laws and that moral causes were inherent to the nation, not to individuals. Buckles concept of mankind was shaped by the belief that there was no place for chance or supernatural intervention in accounting for the history and progress of mankind. All of history was the result of the universality of law. Within this viewpoint, Buckle saw corporate entities such as the church or political institutions, as interfering with the function of universal law and causing disfunction within society. This was because they attempted to direct society for their own ends rather than allowing the laws of human activity to play themselves out naturally. Buckle pointed to the fact that no matter what any corporate entities did within society the suicide rate remained constant. He also pointed out that when Charles III of Spain attempted to emancipate his people from the oppressions of the Spanish clergy, the people turned on him because they were not enlightened enough to appreciate what he was trying to do. All of this led Buckle to the belief that:
| No great political improvement, no great reform, either legislative or executive, has ever been originated in any country by its rulers, every great reform which has been effected has consisted, not in doing something new but in doing something old. Law givers are nearly always the obstructors of society, instead of its helpers. |
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If history was controlled by universal laws, as indicated the regularities of statistics, then the actions of individuals or corporate entities were of little consequence. Moreover, according to Quetlet and Buckle, the fact that social scientists could not give a detailed prediction of individual behaviour was of no consequence since the laws of probability would even out all individual actions over the long term. This challenged the entire concept of human free will however, and by the late 19th century the notion of randomness was introduced in order to bring free will back into the equations.
In considering the theories that were promoted by both Quetlet and Buckle, it must be remembered that they were not accepted without challenge and were, in fact, subjects of controversy throughout the 19th century. However, notwithstanding this caveat, these theories did have an effect on the way that the British viewed mankind as a whole. The social sciences were the only avenue available to the administration that offered any options for social control other than brute force. Since force was always expensive, it seems reasonable that administrators would attempt to control society without its use to the largest degree possible.
Notions that the behaviour of large groups of people could be predicted through the use of statistics would have been particularly attractive to the British in India where they were faced with the task of ruling millions. Moreover, these millions were very foreign in their ways of conceiving the world and for this reason posed a far greater problem of control than would an equal number of Europeans. Some kind of an overarching understanding of their newly acquired subjects was necessary.
The most obvious, widespread feature that was available to the British was the institution of caste. However, this institution in and of itself, was outside of British experience. Therefore it was necessary, if this key was to be used, that an understanding of caste be attained. The tools at hand were the social sciences and the apparent key to the social sciences was statistics. Among the social sciences
that were popular in the 19th century were phrenology, physical anthropology and later, sociology and eugenics. Each of these areas of study had effects on each other and each of them, to some degree, affected the development of colonial policy as it referred to the control and maintenance of populations. However, due to the relatively late arrival of both eugenics and sociology, the present paper will concentrate on the effects of phrenology and anthropology.
In the same way that astrology is related to astronomy,
phrenology is related to anthropology. Both dealt with skull shapes and physiognomy and many of the same people who worked in anthropology also worked in phrenology from the beginning of the 19th century to the 1840s. By the end of the 1840s phrenology had waned because of its failure to find a second generation of devotees but many of the collections that phrenologists had assembled were subsequently used by anthropologists. However, at the height of its popularity, phrenology had sixteen societies in Scotland, six in England and two in Ireland. Throughout Europe there were more than thirty societies, about half of which met regularly, had good attendance and were financially solvent. The presence of sixteen societies in Scotland is particularly striking since this was a major center of intellectual thought during the period. This would give credence to the notion that there was a good deal of attention paid to phrenology in intellectual circles though it is granted that this attention was not always favourable. Further, it seems notable that the British Isles had a relatively large number of societies in comparison with other areas of Europe.
Phrenology attempted to define the potential of both individuals and nations based on the shape of skulls. It
was contended that the outer shape of the human skull was a reflection of the configuration of the mind that it housed and that various parts of the mind affected the abilities and temperament of the individual. Moreover, it was believed that national and racial characteristics could be discerned from the study of a large number of skulls from any given race or nationality. Each area of the brain was believed to control a specific part of the personality or intellectual ability and the development of the skull in the corresponding areas was thought to indicate the development of the underlying brain. Thus, by simply examining the exterior of the head it was believed that the character and potential of the individual could be ascertained. This appears to have been a real concern of phrenologists as shown by the following except from the Phrenological Journal in 1825:
| We trust, also, that this notice will induce some of our readers, going to distant countries, to avail themselves of the facilities which the science affords for the accurate and minute appreciation of character, and to collect skulls in elucidation of the origin, dispositions, and talents of foreign nations. |
In examining this theory in relation to colonialism in India, it must be remembered that castes were often considered to be divisions based on race. Therefore, it is quite possible that
these theories had an affect on the conceptual construct of the British in India with regard to their attitudes toward Indians of various castes. It is also interesting to note that Quetlet, one of the founders of statistics, while cautiously sceptical about phrenology, wrote Sur lhomme et le developpemment de ses facultes in 1835 in which he described the "average man" physically and intellectually on the basis of cranial measurements. Since Quetlet was very influential in the development of statistical thinking, the possibility that he spread these theories to statisticians is very strong.
As with all intellectual movements however, one must question how wide spread the ideas of phrenology became in the popular sense. Perhaps the best way to gauge this is to examine the amount of printed material that was available on the subject and whether there was any mention of the field in the press. On both accounts, the evidence indicates that
there was a wide dissemination of phrenological information. There were journals in Britain, the United States and Germany and by 1836 there were 64000 volumes of writings devoted to phrenology. Further, there appears to have been regular mention of phrenology in the popular press. On this basis it should be safe to assume that phrenological theories were well spread outside of intellectual circles.
When phrenology faded in the late 1840s anthropology took up many of the underlying beliefs that phrenology had promoted. This can be seen by the continued belief that races could be classified and their societal development explained on the basis of the shape of their skulls. While this was primarily seen in the study of Negroid skulls, the theories were equally applicable to all non European groups. In the 1860s James Hunt, a noted anthropologists of the day, stated:
| .... we must not shrink from the candid avowal of what we believe to be the real place in nature, or in society, of the African or any other race. It will be the duty of conscientious anatomists carefully to record all deviations from the human standard of organization and analogy with inferior types, which are frequently manifested in the negro race. |
This statement shows that
there was a belief in not only the superiority of the white races but that the inferiority of other races was believed to be caused by innate physiological attributes that could be observed and quantified. Belief in the innate inferiority of others and in the notion that this inferiority had physical, measurable manifestations was an old European tradition as shown by the following quote from le Comte de Buffon in 1749 as stated in L'histoire naturelle de l'homme in describing Laplanders:
| Non seulement ces peuples se ressemblent par la laideur, le petitetesse de la taille, la couleur des cheveux et des yeux, mais ils ont aussi tous a peu pres les memes inclinations et les meme moeurs, ils son tous egalement grossiers, superstitieux, stupides..., sans courage, sans respect pour soi-meme, sans pudeur; ce peuple abject n'a de moeurs qu'assez pour etre meprise... |
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This attitude was legislatively expressed in India by the passing of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, the same year as the first full Indian census was being planned. In explanation of the Act it was stated that:
| ... when we speak of `professional criminals', we... [mean] a tribe whose ancestors were criminals from time immemorial, who are themselves destined by the usages of caste to commit crime, and whose descendants will be offenders against the law, until the whole tribe is exterminated or accounted for in the manner of thugs. |
This statement clearly destined large groups of people to be condemned as criminals by birth. Further, it articulates the notion that caste is an ahistorical system that contributes to what the British perceived as a static Indian society. Criminals were not criminals for socio-economic reasons. They were criminals because of the caste into which they had been born. In observing this it should be recalled that caste was also believed to have been responsible for the maintenance of racial types in India. Therefore, there is an intimate connection between caste and race based on which castes intermarried and which did not. Herbert Risley, Commissioner for the 1901 census states that:
| ...race sentiment...rests upon a foundation of facts that can be verified by scientific methods; that it supplied the motive principle of caste; that it continues, in the form of fiction or tradition, to shape the most modern developments of the system; and, finally, that its influence has tended to preserve in comparative purity the types which it favours. |
