The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics

Eugenic thought and practice swept the world from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century in a remarkable transnational phenomenon. Eugenics informed social and scientific policy across the political spectrum, from liberal welfare measures in emerging social-democratic states to feminist ambitions for birth control, from public health campaigns to totalitarian dreams of the "perfectibility of man." This book dispels for uninitiated readers the automatic and apparently exclusive link between eugenics and the Holocaust. It is the first world history of eugenics and an indispensable core text for both teaching and research. Eugenics has accumulated generations of interest as experts attempted to connect biology, human capacity, and policy. In the past and the present, eugenics speaks to questions of race, class, gender and sex, evolution, governance, nationalism, disability, and the social implications of science. In the current climate, in which the human genome project, stem cell research, and new reproductive technologies have proven so controversial, the history of eugenics has much to teach us about the relationship between scientific research, technology, and human ethical decision-making.

Alison Bashford is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sydney. She has published widely on the modern history of science and medicine, including Purity and Pollution and Imperial Hygiene, and has co-edited Contagion, Isolation, and Medicine at the Border. Philippa Levine is the Mary Helen Thompson Centennial Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. Her books include Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire, and The British Empire, Sunrise to Sunset.

Contributors Abbreviations
Introduction Eugenics and the modern worldPhilippa Levine and Alison Bashford Part One: Transnational themes in the history of eugenics 1. The Darwinian context: Evolution and inheritanceDiane B. Paul and James Moore
2. Anthropology, colonialism, and eugenicsPhilippa Levine
3. Race, science, and eugenics in the twentieth centuryMarius Turda
4. Eugenics and the science of geneticsNils Roll-Hansen
5. Fertility control: Eugenics, neo-Malthusianism, and feminism Susanne Klausen and Alison Bashford
6. Disability, psychiatry, and eugenicsMathew Thomson
7. Eugenics and the state: Policy-making in comparative perspectiveVéronique Mottier
8. Internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and eugenicsAlison Bashford 9. Gender and sexuality: A global tour and compass Alexandra Minna Stern
10. Eugenics and genocideA. Dirk Moses and Dan Stone
Part Two: National/colonial formations 11. Eugenics in Britain: The view from the metropole Lucy Bland and Lesley Hall
12. South Asia's eugenic pastSarah Hodges
13. Eugenics in Australia and New Zealand: Laboratories of racial scienceStephen Garton
14. Eugenics in China and Hong Kong: Nationalism and colonialism, 1890s-1940sYuehtsen Juliette Chung
15. Eugenics in South Africa: Paradoxes in the place of race?Saul Dubow
16. Eugenics in colonial KenyaChloe Campbell
17. Eugenics in post-colonial Southeast AsiaSunil S. Amrith
18. German eugenics and the wider world: Beyond the racial statePaul Weindling
19. Eugenics in France and the coloniesRichard S. Fogarty and Michael A. Osborne
20. Eugenics in the Netherlands and the Dutch East IndiesHans Pols
21. The Scandinavian states: Reformed eugenics appliedMattias Tydén
22. The first-wave eugenic revolution in southern Europe: Science sans frontièresMaria Sophia Quine
23. Eugenics in eastern Europe, 1870s-1945Maria Bucur
24. Eugenics in Russia and the Soviet UnionNikolai Krementsov
25. Eugenics in Japan: Sanguinous repairJennifer Robertson
26. Eugenics in interwar IranCyrus Schayegh
27. Eugenics and the JewsRaphael Falk
28. Eugenics policy and practice in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and MexicoPatience A. Schell
29. The path of eugenics in Brazil: Dilemmas of miscegenationGilberto Hochman, Nísia Trindade Lima, and Marcos Chor Maio
30. Eugenics in the United StatesWendy Kline
31. Eugenics in Canada: A chequered history, 1850s - 1990sCarolyn Strange and Jennifer A. Stephen
Epilogue: Where did eugenics go? Alison Bashford
Chronology Index