Racist Descriptions (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good or better. First edition. 8vo. [5], ii-iii, [2], 2-227, [1] pp. Brown pebbled publisher's cloth with black rules to the boards and spine, a gold decoration on the front board, spine lettered in gold. Black coated endpapers and pastedowns. Illustrated with a frontispiece and with five plates bound at the end of the volume. The majority of the images on the plates show spearheads and other palaeolithic implements from Middlesex, one plate shows images from a palaeolithic cave in Europe, the other images are that of weapons from hunter-gatherer tribes in New Guinea, Australia, with some tools used by Inuit peoples. A large portion of the book is devoted to scholarly archaeology and geological studies of Great Britain, with the use of evidence excavated from burial mounds and other historic sites, and with the use of written sources (Caesar, Tacitus, etc.). At the end of the volume, the author considers several different written sources on hunter-gatherer tribes from Australia, the Arctic region, southern Africa, New Guinea, New Zealand, and other places. Much of this written evidence is taken from Europeans during the early days of exploration and colonization, and reflects the historical prejudices within. The author himself often reflects these prejudices in the language that he uses. The author discusses various historical customs of these different peoples, and frequently compares them to the customs of palaeolithic Britons. Traces of rubbing to the cloth and a 1923 name on the verso of the front flyleaf.