Mixed Race Studies

Hybrid Types of the Human Race: Racial Mixture as a Cause of Conspicuous Morphological Changes of the Facial-type

The Journal of Heredity
Volume 12, Number 6 (June 1921)
pages 274-280

Herman Lundborg (1868-1943)
Race-Biological Institution, Uppsala, Sweden

It has been possible for recent hereditary research to show that some racial qualities are inherited according to Mendel’s law. In 1913, Eugen Fischer, the anthropologist, made a close study of questions of this kind and laid a scientific foundation for hybrid research in the human world.

The morphological race-characters, which are formed through an early and complete ossification—for instance the form, the length, the breadth of the skull etc.—seem to be depending upon heredity in a higher degree than, for instance, the length of the body, which is more easily modified by environmental factors, which depend upon an ossification completed at a later period. I have treated this latter question in a recent communication.

During my travels and investigations in the far north of Sweden, among the population there, which has originated through strong race-mingling among Lapps, Finns and Swedes principally, I could not help noticing that the types vary in a very high degree, and that not unfrequently certain obvious changes of the facial type appear, which do not appear among individuals of a purer race. The numerous recombinations of the genetic structure are probably important causes for this circumstance. There will spring up, it seems to me, in these racial hybrids, besides qualities depending solely on the germ-plasm, in many respects stronger modifications, which probably are to be considered as a partial atrophy. Similar phenomena are often observed in crossings in the vegetable and the animal world…

List of Figures

• RACIAL MIXTURE IN ROYAL FAMILIES
• TYPES OF RACIAL MIXTURE IN SWEDEN
• RACIAL MIXTURES IN SWEDEN
• MIXED TYPES OF UNCIVILIZED PEOPLES

Read the entire article here.

Selling eugenics: the case of Sweden

Notes & Records of the Royal Society
Volume 64, Number 4
pages 379-400
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2010.0009

Maria Björkman
Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change
Linköping University

Sven Widmalm
Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change
Linköping University

This paper traces the early (1910s to 1920s) development of Swedish eugenics through a study of the social network that promoted it. The eugenics network consisted mainly of academics from a variety of disciplines, but with medicine and biology dominating; connections with German scientists who would later shape Nazi biopolitics were strong. The paper shows how the network used political lobbying (for example, using contacts with academically accomplished MPs) and various media strategies to gain scientific and political support for their cause, where a major goal was the creation of a eugenics institute (which opened in 1922). It also outlines the eugenic vision of the institute’s first director, Herman Lundborg. In effect the network, and in particular Lundborg, promoted the view that politics should be guided by eugenics and by a genetically superior elite. The selling of eugenics in Sweden is an example of the co-production of science and social order.

Read the entire article here.