Richard Taylor and the Children of Noah

The nineteenth century was a time of expansion for the British Empire and the Christian missions. The period from the 1830s through to the 1870s was also a time in which a change in racial paradigms occurred in British intellectual life. In the 1830s, thinking on race was dominated by Christian paternalistic humanitarianism, as reflected by the abolitionist and missionary movements. By the 1870s the views of many thinkers on race had hardened, with contemporary science being used to support a vision of defined racial hierarchies resulting from natural evolutionary processes, accompanied by the inevitable decline and extinction of ‘weaker races’ in competition with Europeans. The weakening of the Christian humanitarian view on race has been seen as reflecting the mid-nineteenth-century triumph of a scientific world-view over one based on religion. This chapter seeks to question this supposed polarization of science and religion. It looks at how one man, Richard Taylor (1805–1873), a missionary and a naturalist, sought to reconcile the issues raised by contemporary scientific discoveries with his own religious beliefs. It examines Taylor’s attempts to use both science and religion to argue against racial inequality and for the idea that a truly Christian British Empire would mitigate the damaging effects of imperialism by spreading civilization and the word of God. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Ancient history · Civilization · Empire · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Naturalism · Political science · Race (biology) · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment · Religious studies · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

• The Pretender of Pitcairn Island

  Tillman W Nechtman•Pretender of Pitcairn Island•2018

  Incluir item

• The Holy Word Factory

  Open Access•Floris Solleveld•Global Intellectual History•2025

  Incluir item

• History Workshop Journal

  Clare Midgley, Norris Saakwa-Mante•History Workshop Journal•1992

  Incluir item

• The Sin of the Settler

  Elizabeth Elbourne•Journal of Colonialism and…•2003

  Incluir item

• British Settler Discourse and the Circuits of Empire

  Anthony Lester•History Workshop Journal•2002

  Incluir item