Mapping Moral Geographies: W. Z. Ripley's Races of Europe and the United States

Abstract

Racia and anthropometric cartography produced and reinforced biological, intellectual, and moral hierarchies and was situated within wider scientific racial discourses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The practice of mapping “race” based on the widespread collection of anthropometric measurements occupied both European and New World anthropologists and geographers. My discussion centers on the work of American economist and anthropogeographer, W. Z. Ripley, who in 1899 published a widely acclaimed text on The Races of Europe. This work is contextualized and informed both by Victorian obsessions with categorizing racial hierarchies and by specifically American racial discourses that included concerns over increasing immigration from southern and eastern Europe and the threat immigration posed to the Anglo‐Saxon ruling elite. Using the conceptual framework developed by J. B. Harley and other recent contributions to critical cartography, this article focuses on Ripley's use of cartographic images to support his tripartite racial scheme for Europe, and explores his projection of a “moral geography” onto European and, in turn, American landscapes and populations. Central to this analysis are the links between anthropogeography, environmentalism, heredity, and American immigration, all key elements in Ripley's racial science.

Nation, Race, and Affect: Senses and Sensibilities at National Heritage Sites

“…Beddoe's could thus produce and map an 'Index of Negresence', where colour is pejoratively coded, founded on a quasi-algebraic formula combining like head shape, eye colour, hair colour and so forth (Winlow, 2001, page 521). Even though these maps claimed to describe, they projected a moral geography (Winlow 2006). The facticity of maps lent credence to the frankly speculative natures of the identities charted, but a close 22 examination reveals two trends.…”

Regional Biopolitics

“…An early exercise in regional biopolitics can be found in past debates about the racial composition of the population In the second half of the nineteenth century racial theories were used not only to bolster assumptions of European superiority vis-à-vis the rest of the world, but also to analyse the geographical distribution of 'racial' (WINLOW, 2001(WINLOW, , 2006. As Young notes, the Victorians were 'far more preoccupied with a complex elaboration of European racial differences and 8 alliances than with what they perceived to be the relatively straightforward task of distinguishing between European and non-European races' (YOUNG, 2008, p. 13).…”

What are the ‘Classic’ Articles in Cartography?

“…in political geography dealing with the overt colonial ideologies of past in Halford Mackinder's writing with its infamous 'Heartlands' mapping, Blouet, 2005; or the racist agenda underlying the cartographic analysis of W.Z. Ripley, Winlow, 2006). This kind of revisionism also begs the questions, is 'classic' a permanent state -once its achieved, does it remain forever more?…”