Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800-1930

Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800-1930
Patrick Brantlinger
Publication Date
2003
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Patrick Brantlinger here examines the commonly held nineteenth-century view that all "primitive" or "savage" races around the world were doomed sooner or later to extinction. Warlike propensities and presumed cannibalism were regarded as simultaneously noble and suicidal, accelerants of the downfall of other races after contact with white civilization. Brantlinger finds at the heart of this belief the stereotype of the self-exterminating savage, or the view that "savagery" is a sufficient explanation for the ultimate disappearance of "savages" from the grand theater of world history.