Darwin’s Savages

Science, Race and the Conquest of Patagonia

An unsettling account of the colonisation of Patagonia--and the story of the world-renowned scientist who witnessed it.

An unsettling account of the colonisation of Patagonia--and the story of the world-renowned scientist who witnessed it.

In December 1832, Charles Darwin sailed into Tierra del Fuego, at the tip of South America, where he first encountered 'Indians'. 'I would not have believed how entire the difference between savage and civilised man is,' he wrote. 'It is greater than between a wild and [a] domesticated animal.' But he was shocked by the 'war of extermination' he witnessed in northern Patagonia, waged by the colonising army of Buenos Aires.

Matthew Carr explores how these experiences influenced Darwin's writings, and the theories of scientific racism that others drew from his work. In a sweeping account of soldiers, missionaries, anthropologists and skull-collecting scientists, he traces the connections between colonial expansionism and the tragic 'extinction' of South America's conquered peoples.

From Indigenous graveyards and military memorials to archaeological sites and natural history museums, this is a compelling journey through Patagonia past and present. Amid global battles for historical memory, culture wars over race and empire, and ongoing struggles for Indigenous rights, Carr chronicles the subjugation of Argentina's First Peoples--and the ideas that made it possible.

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