Charles Gabriel Seligman

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Charles Gabriel Seligman bigraphy, stories - British ethnologist

Charles Gabriel Seligman : biography

24 December 1873 – 19 September 1940

Charles Gabriel Seligman FRS (24 December 1873 – 19 September 1940) was a British physician and ethnologist. His main ethnographic work described the culture of the Vedda people of Sri Lanka and the Shilluk people of the Sudan. He was a Professor at London School of Economics and was highly influential as the teacher of such notable anthropologists as Bronisław Malinowski, E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes all of whose work overshadowed his own.

Life

Born in London, Seligman studied medicine at St Thomas’ Hospital. After several years as a physician and pathologist, he volunteered his services to the 1898 Cambridge University expedition to the Torres Strait. He later joined expeditions to New Guinea (1904), Ceylon (1906-1908), and Sudan (1909-1912, again in 1921-1922).

In 1905, Seligman married Brenda Zara Salaman, who accompanied him on many of his expeditions and who he credited in his publications.

From 1913 to 1934, he served as chair of Ethnology at the London School of Economics.

Seligman was also a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Works

Hamites

Seligman is most remembered for his detailed ethnographical work Races of Africa (1930), which recognises four major distinct races of the African continent: Bushmanoids (Bushmen), Pygmies, Negroids, and Caucasoids (Hamites). The Hottentots, Seligman maintains are a mixture of Bushmanoid, Negroid and Hamitic.The Races of Africa, Oxford University Press, 1957, 3rd Ed. p. 23. As a staunch proponent of the Hamitic theory, in his work Seligman asserts that Caucasoid North and East African Hamites were responsible for introducing non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages (Berber-Cushitic-Egyptian) into Africa, as well as civilization, technology and all significant cultural developments. In his book, Seligman states his belief that:

"Apart from relatively late Semitic influence…the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites, its history is the record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushmen, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the Beja and Somali….The incoming Hamites were pastoral ‘Europeans’ – arriving wave after wave – better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes."Edith R. Sanders, "The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective," Journal of African History, 10 (1969), 521-532C. G. Seligman, The Races of Africa, London, 1930, p. 96

Following Giuseppe Sergi’s (1901) classification of the Hamites, Seligman divides the Hamites into two groups: (a) "Eastern Hamites" and (b) "Northern Hamites". The former include the "ancient and modern Egyptians… the Beja, the Berberines (Barbara and Nubians), the Galla, the Somali, the Danakil and… Ethiopians". The latter branch includes the Berbers and the "Taureg and Tibu of the Sahara, the Fulbe of Western Sudan and the extinct Guanche of the Canary Islands".The Races of Africa, Oxford University Press, 1957 3rd Ed. p. 87.

Seligman acknowledged varying degrees of Negroid admixture amongst the Hamitic groups, but emphasized throughout his major works the essential racial and cultural unity of the various Hamitic peoples. In his Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1913), he writes that the Northern and Eastern Hamitic "groups shade into each other, and in many parts a Negro admixture has taken place, nevertheless, culturally if not always physically, either division stands apart from its fellow."C.G. Seligman, "Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan", The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 43 (Jul. – Dec., 1913), pp. 593-705. The Hamites in general, and the Northern Hamites in particular, he asserted, have close "kinship with the European representatives of the Mediterranean race".Charles Gabriel Seligman, The Races of Africa, (Oxford University Press, 1967), 4th ed. p.62. Drawing from Coon, Seligman also discusses fairer features observed amongst a minority of Berbers or Northern Hamites, such as lighter skin, golden beards and blue eyes. Races of Africa, however, notably questions the belief held by some anthropologists in the early 20th century that these fairer traits, such as blondism, were introduced by a Nordic variety.The Races of Africa, Oxford University Press, 1957, 3rd Ed. p. 115.