Anthropology in transition: a study of the sciences of man at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1866-1870

The institutional history of Victorian anthropology during the 1860s has concentrated on disputes between members of the Ethnological Society of London (ESL) and the Anthropological Society of London (ASL), and the way that these disputes were apparently resolved with the foundation at the start of the next decade of the Royal Anthropological Institution (RAI). What previous accounts have missed out, however, is that this latter amalgamation became possible only thanks to sustained interaction between these two groups, especially throughout the later 1860s at the annual meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) – meetings that took place outside of London, involving many other groups with interests in the developing sciences of Man and typically taking place in a much more public, and publicized, manner than did ESL or ASL meetings. Drawing extensively on the periodical literature of the era, along with archival materials and other previously unstudied primary sources, this thesis reconstructs this protracted process of consolidation via a close examination of debates over the sciences of Man with a special focus at the five annual meetings of the BAAS between 1866 and 1870. By relating this reconstruction to major historical themes, including the professionalization and institutionalisation of science, science and religion, and the role of science in the public sphere and vice versa, the thesis attempts to bring the historiography of anthropology into closer contact with recent trends in scholarship on Victorian science generally.