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The Better Sort: Nobility and Human Variety in Eighteenth‐Century Great B ritain
Author(s) -
Mc Inerney Timothy
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/1754-0208.12138
Subject(s) - nobility , privilege (computing) , race (biology) , variety (cybernetics) , stock (firearms) , history , human blood , politics , genealogy , sociology , law , political science , gender studies , medicine , archaeology , computer science , artificial intelligence , physiology
The noble tradition of exclusive, linear bloodlines has been one of the most consistent and influential elements of race‐thinking in Western history, expressing human superiority in terms of genealogical purity, which must be perpetually protected from contamination with the blood of inferior stock. This article briefly reviews the different facets of noble blood in eighteenth‐century B ritain – spiritual, political and medical – and considers how different discourses of hereditary privilege influenced the emergence of human taxonomies at this time.