The 19th century generated a number of outlandish and disturbing theories of the scientific hierarchy which was a applied to all human beings, now largely discarded these were used to justify both the British raj and the catastrophic famines which were the hallmark of supposedly liberal and enlightened British rule in in India millions died from famine caused by the exploitative and parasitical nature of colonial rule .Just as in Ireland with the potato famine was said to be the regrettable but unavoidable machinations of the free market but however this was not just justified economically. Just as the Irish dismissed as brutal Celtic types in the same manner India’s natives were deemed as an inferior stock to the Anglo Saxon ‘master’ race . Social Darwinism held that certain races were less than human and destined to die out and eugenics went a step further saying the state should involve itself in killing off those human beings who were not advance enough .Which then explains why the Bengal famine of 1943 which killed 3 million was not only a result of non intervention by the British government but was actually engineered by it The misery caused by British economic and racial policies provided rich pickings for evangelicals like Wilberforce under the camouflage of fake humanitarian concern just as it did for abolition of slavery .Unfortunately the racial thinking of that period is far from dead ,rather it is actually promoted by a powerful circle of academic authorities both Indian and western on India but also by descendents of Wilberforce’s right wing extremist religious lobby.
This program shows how the academic racism of the period helped to spread imperialist policies across the globe. Sifting through the “science” of eugenics and its link to social Darwinism, the film juxtaposes the racial hygiene theories of Robert Knox, Francis Galton, and Eugen Fischer with racial warfare in Tasmania, Victorian apathy in famine-wracked India, and—prefacing the Holocaust—horrific German colonization tactics in Namibia. Expert commentary comes from author David Dabydeen, Dr. Maria Misra of Oxford University, and Professor Catherine Hall of University College London. Contains graphic footage from concentration camps.
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