Abstract
When the seesaw moves it carries a similar group of passengers at each end. Occasionally, during the swing of the seesaw, one passenger seems to stand out from the others. In the late 1960s that passenger was black. There arose a new veneration for the noble savage, and the concept of the savage was so widened that much of Africa, Asia as well as the favoured Pacific islands shared in the new veneration. As the Europeans and Americans who idolised a simple way of life were essentially showing a distaste for their own civilisation, there was little limit to the variety of remote societies for which they could feel sympathy — so long as crucial facets of those societies were the polar opposite of their own.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Boas on Africa: Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man (New York, revised edn, 1938) esp. pp. 253 ff.
Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (London, 1929).
Evans-Pritchard in Africa: E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Social Anthropology (London, 1951 ) pp. 98–9.
Harold Macmillan’s ‘Winds of Change’ speech was made in Capetown on 3 February 1960: Neville Williams, (ed.), Chronology of the Modern World (London, 1966) p. 672.
Arthur Miller on Africa; Alfred Kazin (ed.), Writers At Work, 3rd Series (New York,1976) p. 226.
Violence in American cities 1964–67: Godfrey Hudgson, America in Our Time (New York, 1976); Jim F. Heath, Decade of Disillusionment, p. 254, for Rap Brown.
The ‘original affluent society’: see R. B.Lee and I. De Vore, Man the Hunter (Chicago, 1968).
Anthropologists on tribal warfare: Moni Nag, ‘Anthropology and Population’, Population Studies, 1973, vol. 27, p. 61.
Cannibals: W. Arens, The Man-eating Myth (New York, 1979 )
The argument was challenged by Derek Denton, The Hunger for Salt: An Anthropological, Physiological and Medical Analysis (Berlin, 1982) esp. pp. 101–13.
Trader Martin: Ashley Montagu, ‘Lewis Henry Morgan and Charles Martin on the American Indian’, in Frontiers of Anthropology (New York, 1974) p. 277. Montagu’s own comment is on p. 272.
Aboriginals as destroyers: G. Blainey, Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Ancient Australia (Melbourne, 1982 edn) pp. 51–66, 82.
The Kung Bushmen: Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Harvard, 1978 ) pp. 82, 100.
H. A. L. Fisher, A History of Europe (London, 1946 edn) p. 1219.
Geographer’s view of environmental determinism: Daniel B. Luten, ‘Ecological Optimism in the Social Sciences’, American Behavioral Scientist, 1980, vol. 24, p. 134.
Copyright information
© 1988 Geoffrey Blainey
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Blainey, G. (1988). The Return of The Noble Savage. In: The Great Seesaw. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10086-6_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10086-6_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-10088-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-10086-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)