Search results for "proto-racialism"

Between the Darkness of Barbarism and the Light of Civilization: British Images of the Finn in the Late Eighteenth Century

2014

This article aims to show that it was the British travellers (Coxe, Tooke, Clarke,et al.) to Finland in the late eighteenth century who discovered Finland for theBritish reading public. As they distinguished the Finns as a separate ‘race’ fromthe Russians, the Swedes, and the Lapps, they contributed to the proto-racialistimage of them that would become popular in the nineteenth century. BecauseSweden had become an important maritime trading partner (in iron ore, tar, andtimber) to the British, its eastern part, Finland, also became an interesting countryto visit en route from Stockholm to Saint Petersburg (or from Saint Petersburgto Stockholm). The travellers were astonished to realize that…