Abstract
AT the meeting of the British Association at Liverpool last year, Mr. C. H. Read, of the British Museum, read a paper before the Anthropological Section, which deserves more notice than has been accorded to it. He urged that “what is needed in this country, with its vast colonial possessions, is a Bureau of Ethnology, such as has now existed for some time in the United States. The value of such an institution for our empire can scarcely be estimated. That its tabulated researches would be of the greatest importance to science will not be doubted; but its strongest claim to existence as a national institution is the immense service it would render, first, to the officers governing our distant possessions, and, second, to the Central Government at home, who would thus have in the compass of a modest library a synopsis of the history, manners, customs, and religious beliefs of the innumerable races composing the British Empire. In a word, we should have at hand the means of understanding the motives which influence the peoples with whom we are constantly dealing, and thus be able to avoid the disagreements arising from ignorance of their cherished prejudices and beliefs.” He then referred to the Bureau of Ethnology in Washington, which was created with the quick decision of a practical people when they realised that they had at their doors a race that was fated to disappear within a measurable time, and that it was their duty to record the history, beliefs and culture of the vanishing American Indian before the opportunity had passed away for ever.
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HADDON, A. A Plea for a Bureau of Ethnology for the British Empire. Nature 56, 574–575 (1897). https://doi.org/10.1038/056574a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/056574a0