Abstract
On 15th June 1922, Elliot Smith wrote: “Rivers’s death is a real catastrophe and compels me to make a new orientation in life, for it has upset so many plans that we were developing in common . . . ”1 The passing of Rivers was indeed a watershed in the history of British anthropology, and we shall now consider its relation to a protracted and bitter debate between the supporters of extreme diffusionism and the opponents of that creed.
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Notes and References
Warren R. Dawson (ed.), Sir Grafton Elliot Smith. A Biographical Record by His Colleagues (London, 1938), pp. 79, 80.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Pitt-Rivers dated 30th August 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58.
R.A.I. Archives, A3, Part 2. See also J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., Miscellanea, 1922–27.
Letter from Elliot Smith to John L. Myres dated 13 Dec. 1922, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Letter from E. N. Fallaize to John L. Myres dated 18 Dec. 1922, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Minutes of first meeting of “Joint Committee for Anthropological Research and Teaching”, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from E. N. Fallaize to John L. Myres dated 30 May 1923, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
John L. Myres, memorandum entitled “The Relation of Anthropology to Other Subjects, With Special Reference to History, Geography and Economics”, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
A. C. Haddon, “Migrations of Culture”, The Observer, 22 June 1924.
Dawson, op. cit. (note 1), p. 214.
A. C. Haddon, “Pearls as Givers of Life”, Man 24 131 (1924).
Haddon Collection, Envelope 5274.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Haddon dated 16 Nov. 1924, Haddon Collection, Envelope 5274.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Haddon dated 18 Nov. 1924, Haddon Collection, Envelope 5274.
H. J. Fleure, obituary for Haddon in Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 9,451 (Jan. 1941).
Letter from William Ridgeway to Haddon dated 10 Dec. 1924, Haddon Collection, Envelope 4.
W. J. Perry, “Pearls and Pearl Shell in the Pacific”, Man 25 22 (1925).
A. C. Haddon, “Pearls as Givers of Life”, Man 25 32 (1925).
The Times, 17 Jan. 1925.
Letter from E. N. Fallaize to John L. Myres dated 19 Jan. 1925, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Ibid.
The Times, 30 Jan. 1925.
Undated letter from Balfour to Fallaize, to which Fallaize replied on 11 Feb. 1925, R.A.I.Archives, A58, Part 3.
The Times, 23 Jan. 1925.
Letter from E. N. Fallaize to O. G. S. Crawford dated 11 Feb. 1925, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1924 and Apr. 1924.
Letter from O. G. S. Crawford to E. N. Fallaize dated 12 Feb. 1925, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
The Times Literary Supplement, 11 June 1925.
Ibid.
The Times Literary Supplement, 18 June 1925.
Ibid.
The Times Literary Supplement, 25 June 1925.
In an interview with the author given in New Zealand in May 1976, C. E. Fox threw a little further light on the nature of his attitudes towards Rivers and Elliot Smith. After paying tribute to the personal and intellectual qualities of Rivers, Fox went on to indicate that he had some reservations about Elliot Smith, and said that, in his opinion, Rivers too was “not so sure” about the Australian anatomist.
Transcribed copy of letter from C. E. Fox to “The Reviewer of The Threshold of the Pacific”, dated 25 Nov. 1925, Haddon Collection, Envelope 5363.
Letter of 13 Mar. 1980 from Paul Jorion to the author, following communications between Jorion and Mr. G. Phillips of The Times archives. In the doctoral dissertation upon which the present work is based, I wrongly inferred, from an ambiguous annotation by Haddon on a transcribed copy of the letter from Fox to his reviewer, that the reviewer was Colonel T. C. Hodson, who was shortly thereafter appointed to succeed Haddon as Reader in Ethnology at Cambridge. This led me, in the dissertation, to argue that Hodson’s appointment was primarily motivated by the desire to stop the extreme diffusionists getting any sort of foothold in Cambridge Ethnology. Since, however, Jorion’s industry and persistence has proved that Hodson was not the reviewer, and since, as will be argued shortly, it appears that Hodson was appointed to strengthen the Cambridge Department’s claim to being an aid to imperialism, I have decided to drop this line of argument.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Haddon dated 5 Oct. 1926, Haddon Collection, Envelope 5274.
Rough draft of letter from Haddon to Radcliffe-Brown dated 26 Mar. 1927, Haddon Collection, Envelope 16002.
M. Mead, Blackberry Winter (New York, 1972), p. 159. See also Dawson op. cit. (note 1), pp. 77, 78.
Review of John Mathew’s Two Representative Tribe of Queensland, Man 10, 82 (1910).
B. Malinowski, A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (London, 1967), pp. 64, 65. The entry is actually dated 17 Jan. 1914, but this is obviously incorrect by a margin of one year.
Ibid., pp. 65, 66.
James Urry, “Notes and Queries on Anthropology and the Development of Field Methods in British Anthropology 1870–1920”, Proc. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. (1972), p. 52.
B. Malinowski, Coral Gardens and Their Magic (London, 1935), p. 326.
Letter from Malinowski to Haddon dated 25 May 1916, Haddon Collection, Envelope 7.
B. Malinowski, “Ethnology and the Study of Society”, Economica 2, 218 (1922).
B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (New York, 1961, original edn., 1922), p. 15.
Ibid., p. 5.
B. Malinowski, Myth in Primitive Psychology (New York, 1926), pp. 92, 93.
Raymond Firth, Man and Culture (New York, 1957), p. 6.
Ibid. For a review of Malinowski’s field diaries which draws some interesting parallels between Malinowski and Joseph Conrad, see George W. Stocking Jr., “Empathy and Antipathy in the Heart of Darkness”, J. Hist. Behay. Sci. 4 189–194 (1968).
Meyer Fortes, Kinship and the Social Order (Chicago, 1969), p. 5.
B. Malinowski, “Kinship”,Man 30 17 (1930).
A. C. Haddon (ed.), Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits 5 (1904). See Rivers’s partly hypothetical sketch of the way a member of the Mabuiag community becomes familiar with the kinship system (pp. 140–142).
B. Freire-Marreco and J. L. Myres (eds.), Notes and Queries on Anthropology (4th edn., London, 1912). See for example the section on “Social Organization”.
In A. C. Seward (ed.), Science and the Nation (Cambridge, 1917).
From the Special Foreword to the third edition of The Sexual Life of Savages (London, 1932).
John L. Myres, “A Geographical View of the Historical Method in Ethnology”, The Geographical Teacher 13 (1925–1926).
Ibid.
Ibid.
W. J. Perry, “Professor Myres and the Historical Method”, The Geographical Teacher (1925).
John L. Myres, “Reply to Mr Perry”, The Geographical Teacher (1925).
Letter from L. H. Dudley Buxton to Haddon dated 15 Mar. 1925, Haddon Collection, Envelope 5274.
Letter from Mrs. Winifred Hoernle to Haddon dated 28 Apr. 1926, Haddon Collection, Envelope 9. In the same letter Mrs Hoernle talks about a well-known physical anthropologist who for our purposes had better remain nameless: “Professor [X] is a great trial in many ways, for he is a keen Elliot Smith man and is more keen than thorough. He starts all sorts of hair-brained [sic] theories without any basis or practically none, and of course he captures the popular imagination with the result that one is kept busy trying to check students from doing the same thing.”
Cambridge University Archives, “General Board of Studies”, p. 36.
Ibid., (“Private Uncorrected Minutes for Members of the General Board of Studies Only”, 12 May 1926).
Cambridge University Archives (“Private Uncorrected Minutes for Members of the General Board of Studies”, p. 40, 21 July 1926). One of the two candidates interviewed was presumably Hodson. The identity of the second interviewee is not recorded.
Personal communication with W. E. Armstrong, 19 Apr. 1973.
Op. cit. (note 66), p. 20.
Envelope 4019 in the Haddon Collection contains information regarding a special course of lectures for Indian Civil Service probationers given by Haddon in 1910 and 1911.
Rep. Brit. Assoc. Adv. Sci. (1911), pp. 509, 510.
Annotation in Haddon’s handwriting on Fox, op. cit. (note 36).
The Times Literary Supplement, 30 Sept. 1926.
The Times Literary Supplement, 7 Oct. 1926.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Haddon dated 1 Oct. 1926, Haddon Collection, Envelope 5274.
Rough draft of a letter from Haddon to Elliot Smith dated 3 Oct. 1926, Haddon Collection, Envelope 5274.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Haddon dated 5 Oct. 1926, Haddon Collection, Envelope 5274.
Letter from Elliot Smith to E. E. Embree dated 31 Jan. 1927, Rockefeller Foundation Archives 401D.
The year of publication of Tylor’s Primitive Culture.
Letter from Elliot Smith to C. J. Herrick dated 13 Feb. 1927, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, “401AD University College”. Herrick, an eminent neurologist, was apparently acting for the Rockefeller Foundation during a visit to London.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Embree dated 19 Feb. 1927, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, “401AD University College — Anthropology 1924, 1926–27 (No funds granted)”.
Ibid.
Elliot Smith to Herrick, op. cit. (note 81).
Elliot Smith to Embree, op. cit. (note 82). It was in fact on the basis of this policy that University College had created a Readership in Cultural Anthropology in 1922, which position Elliot Smith had originally tried to persuade Rivers to accept. (See Chapter IV, p. 146).
Letter from E. E. Embree to Elliot Smith dated 23 Feb. 1927, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, “401AD”.
Letter from Elliot Smith to E. E. Embree dated 14 Mar. 1927, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, “401 AD”. I could find no record in these archives of any Rockefeller grant earmarked for Malinowski at this time. Nonetheless he did benefit from a general grant which the Memorial provided for the London School of Economics.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Embree dated 18 June 1927, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, “401AD”.
Letter from Dr Alan Gregg to Elliot Smith dated 20 June 1927, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, “401AD’.
G. Elliot Smith, Bronislaw Malinowski, Herbert J. Spinden and A. Goldenweiser, Culture: The Diffusion Controversy (London, Psyche Miniatures, 1928), p. 9.
Ibid., p. 29.
Ibid., p. 42.
Ibid., p. 45.
Ibid., p. 54.
Ibid., p. 50, 51.
Ibid., p. 92.
Ibid., p. 94.
Ibid., pp. 95–98.
R.A.I. Archives, A24 (Rivers Memorial Fund Proceedings).
R.A.I. Archives, A10, Part 4.
Op. Cit. (note 99).
Minutes of the R.A.I. “Appeal and Research Committee”, 25 Oct. 1927, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3. The “Appeal and Research Committee” was a subsidiary of the Joint Committee.
This correspondence consisted of a letter from officials of the Melanesian Mission in the 8 June issue of The Times and a letter by Keith, Westermarck and Pitt-Rivers in the 16 June issue.
Letter from Fallai7e to Myres date 26 June 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Minutes of the R.A.I. Appeal Committee Meeting, 3 July 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Fallaize to Myres dated 13 Aug. 1928 and letter from Myres to Fallaize 18 Aug. 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Pitt-Rivers dated 30 Aug. 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Letter from Keith to Fallaize dated 28 Aug. 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Fallaize to Keith dated 30 Aug. 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Fallaize to Myres dated 30 Aug. 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Fallaize to Perry dated 19 Sept. 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Perry to Fallaize dated 23 Sept. 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Fallaize to Elliot Smith dated 25 Sept. 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Fallai7e to Myres dated 8 Nov. 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Screed headed “Royal Anthropological Institute Appeal”, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from C. G. Seligman to Fallaize dated 7 Jan. 1929, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3. The “highly qualified man” working in the Sudan was presumably E. E. Evans-Pritchard, then engaged upon his investigations of the Azande.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Fallaize dated 9 Jan. 1929, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Screed headed “Draft of Anthropological Research Fund Appeal”, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Screed headed “Suggestion as the Basis for Discussion of an Appeal for Funds for Anthropological Research”, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Fallaize to Elliot Smith dated 31 Jan. 1929, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Fallaize dated 1 Feb. 1929, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Myres to Fallaize dated 6 Mar. 1929, letter from Fallaize to Myres dated 8 Mar. 1929, and letter from Ormsby Gore to Fallaize dated 11 Apr. 1929, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Index to The Times 1929.
Circular letter by Fallaize dated 1 May 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Sheet of paper headed “Replies to Enquiries as to the Establishment of Anthropological Union under the International Research Council”, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Elliot Smith to Fallaize dated 10 May 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Letter from Perry to Fallaize dated 14 May 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
Lothian Collection, Edinburgh.
Letter from C. G. Seligman to the Trustees of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial dated 1 July 1925, letter from C. G. Seligman to Dr B. Ruml dated 3 July 1925, letter from Dr B. Ruml to C. G. Seligman dated 31 July 1925, letter from C. G. Seligman to Dr B. Ruml dated 23 Oct. 1925, and letter from E. N. Fallaize to Dr B. Ruml dated 6 Nov. 1925, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, “Royal Anthropological Institute 1924–30”.
Letter from Fallaize to George E. Vincent, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, dated 30 Jan. 1929, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, “Royal Anthropological Institute 1924–30”.
Inter-office correspondence between E. E. Day and G. E. Vincent dated 27 Feb. 1929, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, “Royal Anthropological Institute 1924–30”.
Annotation on letter from E. E. Day to Elton Mayo dated 8 Mar. 1929, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, “Royal Anthropological Institute 1924–30”.
Letter from E. E. Day to Fallaize dated 3 Apr. 1929, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, “Royal Anthropological Institute 1924–30”.
Letter from G. E. Vincent to Fallaize dated 23 May 1929, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, _“Royal Anthropological Institute 1924–30”.
Letter from Hocart to Haddon dated 23 June, Haddon Collection, Envelope 4. Although the year is not given in the date on the letter, one can be reasonably confident from a knowledge of the dates of Hocart’s fieldwork that the year was indeed 1929.
Excerpt from dairy of J. Van Sickle headed “Paris, October 6th 1930”, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, “Royal Anthropological Institute 1924–30”.
The suggestion that Elliot Smith should represent the Royal Anthropological Institute at this Congress was made by Pitt-Rivers, who seems to have been more favourably inclined to Elliot Smith than most other members of the Institute. See letter from Pitt-Rivers to Myres dated 27 Aug. 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
R.A.I. Archives, A24, Judging from the handwriting, the author of these retrospective “Proceedings” was J. L. Myres.
Ibid.
Letter from E. E. Day to J. Van Sickle dated 17 July 1931, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, “401S Royal Anthropological Institute 1931–33, 1937–38”.
In addition to his apparently negative reaction to Keith’s version of the Institute’s appeal for funds, Elliot Smith had earlier crossed swords with Keith over the evidence relating to the so-called “Piltdown Man”. See the correspondence in Nature 92 (Sept. 1913 — Feb. 1914).
R.A.I. Archives, A23.
Dawson op. cit. (note 1), p. 85. This source states that, on Elliot Smith’s recollection, the term “human biology” emerged in the course of discussion with E. E. Embree following Elliot Smith’s trip to Australia in 1932. However, this date must be wrong, since the term was in currency before 1932.
Rockefeller Foundation Archives, “401S Royal Anthropological Institute 1931–33, 1937–38”.
Fortes, “Discussion” of Glyn Daniel’s paper on “Elliot Smith, Egypt and Diffusion-ism”, in Lord S. Zuckerman (ed.), The Concepts of Human Evolution (Academic Press, 1973), p. 431.
Young, in Zuckerman, ibid., p. 167.
This article appears in James Hasting’s Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Edinburgh, 1913). In the 1930 volume of Man (p. 20 fn), Malinowski described the article as “excellent”.
Letter from Myres to Fallaize dated 25 Sept. 1928, R.A.I. Archives, A58, Part 3.
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Langham, I. (1981). The Diffusion Controversy. In: The Building of British Social Anthropology. Studies in the History of Modern Science, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8464-6_5
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