| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930. By Patrick Brantlinger. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. xii, 248 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8014-3809-8. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8014-8876-1.)

The idea that "primitives" were going extinct pervaded nineteenth-century Europe and America. Patrick Brantlinger argues indeed that the discourse of extinction displayed remarkable uniformity across ideological lines. Reformers, missionaries, scientists, settlers, government officials at home and abroad, soldiers, novelists, and poets—all agreed that some or all primitive races would inevitably disappear. Perhaps despite its author's intentions, Brantlinger's depressing study shows that little choice existed but grim consensus. Through a brief but fairly exhaustive documentary survey, he hammers home the force of a nineteenth-century paradox. As industrialization and imperialism spread and indigenous populations declined, one conclusion seemed increasingly inescapable: that the technological, organizational, and supposed moral superiority of Occidental civilization—its ability to organize its members, protect the weak, and strive toward collective goals—killed primitives. At the same time, that very power and humanity could lead to softness, decadence, and the extinction of the white race itself. Brantlinger, in short, attempts to reveal extinction discourse as strikingly consistent, an almost inevitable result of the anxious, brutal rise of modern industrial capitalism, imperialism, and expansion.

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