On the phenomena of hybridity in the genus Homo

by Paul Broca

Moral or physical inferiority of some Mulattoes

To give to the question at issue a rigorous solution, it is necessary to study during several generations a population exclusively composed of mulattoes of the first degree. This experience can never be obtained. We find, indeed, at Hayti, a population nearly composed of coloured individuals. But these coloured men are mestizos of every shade, and if this hybrid nation were to subsist in perfect prosperity during several generations, the unlimited prolifickness of mestizos of the first degree between themselves would not thereby be demonstrated.

We are, then, in default of a physiological experimentation analogous to what the monogenists require, in attempting to prove that the crossing of two species of animals is or is not eugenesic, reduced to the impressions, or rather appreciation of observers. Most of these appreciations can only be approximatives wanting a fixed basis. It is absolutely unknown what is the relative proportion of mulattoes of the first degree who intermarry between themselves, and such who intermix with other mestizos, or with individuals of a pure race; nor can we know what, in a given population, should be the normal proportion of these mulattos if they were perfectly prolific between themselves. It then becomes very difficult to say whether the number of mulattoes issued in a direct line from mestizos of the first degree is equal to the normal proportion, or inferior to it; so that, if they are but little inferior to their parents in regard to fecundity, the fact might pass unobserved. The relative sterility of these breeds would only become evident when it approaches absolute sterility. Between this degree of prolifickness and perfect fecundity there are many intermediate degrees, difficult to recognise, and still more difficult to prove.

The first French observer who has denied the prolifickness of mulattoes is M. Jacquinot, author of the zoological part of the Voyage to the South Pole and Oceania. We shall reproduce here some passages from that work. After having spoken of the cross-breeds of animals, M. Jacquinot continues in the following terms:[26]

“It is the same in the human genus. There the species are very approximating, and, according to the principles just laid down, ‘that the more species are approximating the greater the chance of fecundity,’ the mestizos issuing from the intermixture enjoy a certain degree of prolifickness which, however, as in animals, is not absolute. Like the latter, they return to the mother’s species in allying themselves with them; and, independently of their relative fecundity, new individuals are constantly produced by the union of the parent races.

“On observing in our colonies that a population of mulattos is constantly produced and renewed, their fecundity was not doubted; yet it is very limited. On the one hand the mulattos disappear every moment in one or the other of the parent races, and if their unions were constantly between themselves, they would not be long before becoming extinct....

“In a colony, that is to say in an island, or a part of a continent of limited extent peopled by Negroes and white men for some centuries, the greater part of the population should be composed of mulattoes....

“But it is not so, and whatever be the number of mulattoes in the colonies, the predominance of the Negro and Caucasian species is not less certain.... There is, besides, a fact known to persons inhabiting the colonies, that the white women and the negresses are very prolific, which is not the case with the mulatresses.

“We believe to be the first who has pointed out the sterility in human cross-breeds. We have not been able to collect precise and positive observations based on figures; but we think that the figures will be soon forthcoming now that the attention of observers is drawn to the subject.”

The avowal which terminates this passage, much diminishes its importance. M. Jacquinot, not having sojourned long in the various countries he visited, was only able to collect superficial observations in regard to a question which requires long and minute researches. But Mr. Nott, one of the most eminent anthropologists of America, was in a better condition to study this subject.

Living in a country where the Caucasian and Ethiopian races are much mixed, and enabled by his profession as a physician to make his observations on a great number of individuals, he arrived at conclusions similar to those of M. Jacquinot. His first essay on hybridity appeared in 1842. It was but a short paper, which attracted but little notice, and which we have not been able to consult, no copy of it being in the Paris library. M. Jacquinot, whose work appeared in 1846, had certainly no knowledge of this essay, his observations having been made in 1836-40, before M. Nott had published his own. We are not, however, engaged here to discuss the question of priority, we state merely the fact that two distinguished observers studying the same subject, unknown to each other, arrived at the same conclusions relating to the sterility of Mulattoes.

In his essay of 1812, Dr. Nott maintained the following propositions, which we extract from a subsequent publication.[27]

1. That Mulattoes are the shortest lived of any class of the human race.

2. That Mulattoes are intermediate in intelligence between the blacks and the whites.

3. That they are less capable of undergoing fatigue and hardships than either the blacks or whites.

4. That the Mulatto-women are peculiarly delicate, and subject to a variety of chronic diseases. That they are bad breeders, bad nurses, liable to abortions, and that their children generally die young.

5. That when Mulattoes intermarry, they are less prolific than when crossed on the parent stock.

6. That when a Negro man married a white woman, the offspring partook more largely of the Negro type than when the reverse connection had effect.

7. That Mulattoes, like Negroes, although unacclimated, enjoy extraordinary exemption from yellow-fever when brought to Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans.

The propositions, 1, 3, 4, and 5, are the only ones connected with our subject. They confirm, and even enhance, in certain respects, M. Jacquinot’s assertions, yet are they contested, and Dr. Nott himself has found it necessary to restrict their application. He had made his observations in South Carolina where he found the Mulattoes little prolific and short-lived. Having changed his residence, he obtained different results. At Mobile, New Orleans, Pensacola, towns on the Gulf of Mexico, he found among the Mulattoes many instances of manifest longevity and prolificacy, not merely in their crossed but in their direct alliances. What was the cause of this difference? Dr. Nott inquired whether the difference in the results might not depend upon the difference in the ethnological elements in the crossing. All the Europeans who have colonised America did not belong to the same race. The Caucasians, as is well known, are naturally divided in two groups:—the light-haired race, with grey or blue eyes, a white skin; and the brown races, with a deeper complexion and brown or black hair. The first occupy Northern Europe; the second, Southern Europe. There is thus a little less disparity, and a little more affinity between the Europeans of the South and the Negroes, than between the latter and the Northern Europeans, so that when we hear that intermixture succeeds better in the first than in the second case, it should not surprise us. But South Carolina, where the Mulattoes get on so indifferently, has been colonised by the Anglo-Saxons; whilst the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mulattoes are more prospering, have been colonised by the French (Louisiana) and by the Spaniards (Florida). Such is the explanation offered by Dr. Nott. Still in maintaining his conclusions on the issues of Negro women, and men of the Germanic race, he thinks that they are not applicable to the Mulattoes whose parents belong to a Caucasian race more or less dark in complexion. Analogous differences are often observed in animals in such crossings when they are placed in connections with species more or less approximate. Before, however, accepting Dr. Nott’s explanation, it may be as well to examine whether the fact may not be differently explained.

South Carolina, comprised between 32° and 35° N. lat., is situated beyond the zone where the African Negroes live: New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola are situated nearer the tropics, between the 30° and 31°, and we find in Africa, in Northern Sahara, south of Algiers, some tribes of Negroes who have lived in that latitude from time immemorial. Though the climate does not altogether depend on latitude, it may be readily believed that the Negroes become sooner acclimated upon the shores of the Gulf of Mexico than in the more northern regions. But it is known that men transplanted into climates differing much from that in which their race thrives may, by this simple fact, greatly lose their fecundity. It is not always so, but considering that it does happen, we have a right to ask whether the difference pointed out by Dr. Nott between the Mulattoes of South Carolina, and those of the region of the Gulf may not be owing to this cause.

This interpretation is, however, in opposition to two orders of facts. On the one hand, the Negroes and Negresses of South Carolina are perfectly prolific between themselves.[28] The climate of that country has not weakened their generative powers, and there is no reason why, by their alliances with a white race acclimated in that part, there should be produced an offspring less acclimated than their parents. The diminished vitality and fecundity can, therefore, not be attributed to the influence of the media in which they are brought up.

On the other hand, a result similar to that mentioned by Nott, as regards South Carolina, seems to have been obtained in Jamaica under the 18°, corresponding nearly to the latitude of Senegal and Timbuctoo. This island is situated south of Cuba, Hayti, and Porto Rico, where Negroes and Mulattoes thrive, but these islands have been colonised by the French and the Spaniards, whilst Jamaica is an English colony.[29]

The Mulattoes of Jamaica have thus the same ethnologic origin as those of Carolina; and the following remarks from the History of Jamaica, by Long, entirely confirm Nott’s opinion.[30]

“The Mulattoes of Jamaica,” says Long, “are generally well proportioned, and the Mulatto women have fine features, and seem to have more of the White than of the Negro in their blood. Some of them have married women of their own colour, but these marriages are generally sterile. They seem in this respect to resemble certain mules, being less capable of producing between themselves than with the Whites or Blacks. Some instances may possibly have occurred, where, upon the intermarriage of two Mulattoes, the woman has borne children, which children have grown to maturity; but I never heard of such an instance.

“Those Mulattoes of Jamaica, of which I speak, have married young, have received some education, and are distinguished by their chaste and regular conduct. The observations made regarding them have a great degree of certainty. They do not breed, though there is nothing to indicate that they would not be prolific by intermarrying either with the Blacks or Whites.

“In searching for facts contrary to this opinion, it is requisite to discard the suspicion that the Mulatress has had intercourse with any other man than her Mulatto husband, and there would still remain the question, whether the son of a Mulatto, married to the daughter of two other Mulattoes, is capable of producing and forming a durable race.”

Such a grave fact could not be allowed to pass unchallenged. Professor Waitz, much embarrassed by it, could only oppose to it a passage extracted from a work published in 1845 by Lewis, On the Negroes in the West Indies. “Lewis,” says Waitz (Anthropologie der Naturvölker), “expressly denies the sterility of the Mulattoes of Jamaica in their marriages between themselves, and observes, that they are as prolific as the Blacks and Whites, but that they are for the most part flabby and weak, and their children have little vitality.”

Long said he knew of no instance where the children of Mulattoes arrived at maturity. To refute this assertion, known instances should have been cited. But Lewis neglects doing so.[31] He says, on the contrary, that the children, from similar marriages, possess little vitality. Though this expression does not necessarily imply the impossibility of arriving at adult age, it tends at least to the conclusion that the children have little chance to reach it; and when we consider that the preceding passage was intended to refute Long’s assertions, it is surprising how little satisfies Professor Waitz. At any rate, it proves that he could find no other positive document in opposition to the fact mentioned by Long.

This is, perhaps, no reason for accepting without reserve the opinions of Dr. Nott. Before giving a definite judgment, we must wait for further numerous, authentic, and scientific observations. Nevertheless, it must be remarked, that the indefinite fecundity of Mulattoes had been admitted as an axiom, which it was thought there was no necessity of disproving. It was sufficient to say there are many Mulattoes, without investigating whether they maintain themselves, or by continuous intermixture with the parent stocks. The first who wished to inquire more closely has, by his observations, been led to results opposed to general opinion. To these observations, presenting apparently the guarantee of authenticity, positive observation should be opposed; and it is requisite that the latter should be specially collected in countries where the Germanic race has intermarried with the Negro race of Western Africa. The investigations which might be made in the French, Spanish, or Portuguese colonies would have no direct application.

The authors, moreover, we have cited, are far from being the only ones who have denied the fecundity of the Mulattoes in the West Indies. Van Amringe and Hamilton Smith assert, that without a reunion with the parent stocks the Mulattoes would soon become extinct. Day says that Mulattoes are rarely prolific between themselves; and Waitz, somewhat shaken by these testimonies, adds in a note, “The sterility of Mulattoes, when it is complete, may be compared with that fact recognised by Wirgman in plants, that the hybrids of intermediate types between the two parent stocks are sterile, whilst those resembling one or the other species are prolific.”[32] From these facts and testimonies there seems to result—1. That the Mulattoes of the Germanic and Ethiopian races possess little prolificacy: 2. That they are inferior in this respect to the Mulattoes born by the intercourse of Negro women and men belonging to the more or less dark complexioned Caucasian races.

Mulattoes of the latter kind exist in large numbers in the greater part of the Antilles, South America, Central America, Mexico, Mauritius, Bourbon, and Senegal. All these countries have been colonised by the French, Spaniards, or Portuguese. The Mulattoes born there are fecund in their intermixture with the parent stock, as the Mulattoes of Germanic origin; they are also prolific between themselves, at least in the first generation. Are they equally prolific in their direct alliances as in their mixed ones? Are their children arriving at maturity as the others? And finally, when these children intermarry, are they and their descendants prolific? These questions are yet unanswered. They can only be solved after a long series of observations collected by men of science; not by travellers who view the populations superficially, but by close observers, and principally by physicians resident in these localities. In the mean while, here is another passage from the work of Prof. Waitz, quoted by him from Seemann.[33] “The Mulattoes of the Negroes and Whites at Panamá are prolific between themselves, but their children are brought up with difficulty; whilst the families of the pure races produce less children, which however arrive at maturity.” The Europeans of Panamá are of Spanish origin. The prolifickness of the Mulattoes of the first degree is clearly indicated in this passage, but doubts may be entertained as to the fecundity of their descendants. The intermixtures of Negroes and Europeans are not the only ones the results of which exhibit defects to the observers. “The Mulattoes,” says M. Boudin,[34] “are very often inferior to the two parent stocks, both in vitality, intelligence, or morality. Thus the Mulattoes of Pondicherry, known by the name of Topas, exhibit a mortality not only more considerable than that of the Indians, but greater than the Europeans, though the latter are considerably shorter lived in India than in Europe. Positive documents on this point have been published in the Revue Coloniale. So much as to the vitality.

“In Java, the Mulattoes of the Dutch and Malays are so little intelligent that they could never be employed as functionaries. All Dutch historians are agreed upon this point. This much for their intelligence.