Scientific Racism, Social Darwinism, and Global Racial Order

Abstract

The premise of this chapter is the elucidation of a different ontology of global politics and order of the nineteenth century. International relations theory takes for granted a largely ahistorical state-centric ontology, which reifies a specific Eurocentric state and state system as the embodiment of global politics. Instead this chapter focuses on an alternative ontology of race, racial hierarchy, and racial difference as significant for defining the content of an imperial global politics and order. The chapter places into context the emergence of scientific racism and social Darwinism as key intellectual elements in defining a political imaginary that influenced the politics of difference and violence. The chapter shows that this intellectual history reveals a global order that was fundamentally racialized and that global violence was understood and practiced as race war.