Mixed Race Studies

The Vertical and Horizontal Dimensions of the Word Race

Ethnicities
Volume 10, Number 1 (March 2010)
pages 127-140
DOI: 10.1177/1468796809354529

Michael Banton, Emeritus Professor of Sociology
Univeristy of Bristol

The word race has been used both to classify humans and to account for differences between those assigned to the resulting classes or taxa. The two dimensions (horizontal and vertical) are inherent in the conception of race. Initially, the word was used in ways that gave more expression to the sense of descent embodied in the vertical dimension. Since the early 19th century, the word has been used in ways that express the sense of classification reflected in the horizontal dimension. Some histories of thought about human origins and divisions have assumed, wrongly, that a ‘scientific concept of race’ was at some time established within anthropology.

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Cimmerii or Eurasians and Their Future

Simon Wallenburg Press
2007 (Originally Published in 1929)
English
84 pages
ISBN: 1843560135
ISBN-13: 9781843560135

Cedric Dover

A belief in Eugenics was widespread in the early half of the last centenary and amongst its prominent believers were George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler. This iniquitous social philosophy supposed that Northern Europeans were superior in civilization to such races as Indians. Anglo Indians who were of mixed blood were considered, even more inferior since they inherited the worst characteristics of both races. Anglo Indians came under attack from government scientists who wrote papers on Eugenics and used the Anglo Indians as examples how the human race could be degraded by intermarriage. Cedric Dover’s book Cimmerii was written as defence against this racist attack on India’s Anglo Indians. A remarkable pioneering book written before the Second World War, it thoroughly disproved the eugenics theory by recounting the achievements of the Anglo Indian race. It is a shame this brilliant book did to find its way to Europe after it was published, as it would have contributed in discrediting the pseudo science of eugenics. The belief in Eugenics led to the killing, institutionalising and outright genocide of races perceived as inferior or undesirable. The book would have defended the Jews who like the Anglo Indians were deemed a threat to racial purity. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, many ideas about “racial hygiene” were publicly renounced by politicians and members of the scientific community. But the work of Cedric Dover will forever stand out, as the work of one brave man who stood up and defended his small Anglo Indian community in a little book, and in doing so, struck the first blow against an evil that was to sweep through Europe a decade later. Cimmerii? Or Eurasians and Their Future by Cedric Dover is the fourth book in the Anglo Indian Heritage series. The Others are: Herbert Alick Stark ‘Hostages To India Britain’s Betrayal in India: The Story of the Anglo Indian Community These are the Anglo Indians by Reginald Maher. The books are called the Anglo Indian Heritage books as they chronicle the rich and colourful history of the Anglo Indian Community. This small community has had outstanding achievements at every level of society for hundreds of years but that record of achievement has been hidden, passed over or co-opted as British and Indian History. These Books are an attempt to fairly represent the history of the community by works by Anglo Indians themselves.