Eugenic thought and practice swept the world from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century in a remarkable transnational phenomenon. Eugenics informed social and scientific policy across the political spectrum, from liberal welfare measures in emerging social-democratic states to feminist ambitions for birth control, from public health campaigns to totalitarian dreams of the "perfectibility of man." This book dispels for uninitiated readers the automatic and apparently exclusive link between eugenics and the Holocaust. It is the first world history of eugenics and an indispensable core text for both teaching and research. Eugenics has accumulated generations of interest as experts attempted to connect biology, human capacity, and policy. In the past and the present, eugenics speaks to questions of race, class, gender and sex, evolution, governance, nationalism, disability, and the social implications of science. In the current climate, in which the human genome project, stem cell research, and new reproductive technologies have proven so controversial, the history of eugenics has much to teach us about the relationship between scientific research, technology, and human ethical decision-making.

ContributorsAbbreviationsIntroductionEugenics and the modern worldPhilippa Levine and Alison BashfordPart One: Transnational themes in the history of eugenics1. The Darwinian context: Evolution and inheritanceDiane B. Paul and James Moore2. Anthropology, colonialism, and eugenicsPhilippa Levine3. Race, science, and eugenics in the twentieth centuryMarius Turda4. Eugenics and the science of geneticsNils Roll-Hansen5. Fertility control: Eugenics, neo-Malthusianism, and feminismSusanne Klausen and Alison Bashford6. Disability, psychiatry, and eugenicsMathew Thomson7. Eugenics and the state: Policy-making in comparative perspectiveV?ronique Mottier8. Internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and eugenicsAlison Bashford9. Gender and sexuality: A global tour and compassAlexandra Minna Stern10. Eugenics and genocideA. Dirk Moses and Dan StonePart Two: National/colonial formations11. Eugenics in Britain: The view from the metropoleLucy Bland and Lesley Hall12. South Asia's eugenic pastSarah Hodges13. Eugenics in Australia and New Zealand: Laboratories of racial scienceStephen Garton14. Eugenics in China and Hong Kong: Nationalism and colonialism, 1890s-1940sYuehtsen Juliette Chung15. Eugenics in South Africa: Paradoxes in the place of race?Saul Dubow16. Eugenics in colonial KenyaChloe Campbell17. Eugenics in post-colonial Southeast AsiaSunil S. Amrith18. German eugenics and the wider world: Beyond the racial statePaul Weindling19. Eugenics in France and the coloniesRichard S. Fogarty and Michael A. Osborne20. Eugenics in the Netherlands and the Dutch East IndiesHans Pols21. The Scandinavian states: Reformed eugenics appliedMattias Tyd?n22. The first-wave eugenic revolution in southern Europe: Science sans fronti?resMaria Sophia Quine23. Eugenics in eastern Europe, 1870s-1945Maria Bucur24. Eugenics in Russia and the Soviet UnionNikolai Krementsov25. Eugenics in Japan: Sanguinous repairJennifer Robertson26. Eugenics in interwar IranCyrus Schayegh27. Eugenics and the JewsRaphael Falk28. Eugenics policy and practice in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and MexicoPatience A. Schell29. The path of eugenics in Brazil: Dilemmas of miscegenationGilberto Hochman, N?sia Trindade Lima, and Marcos Chor Maio30. Eugenics in the United StatesWendy Kline31. Eugenics in Canada: A chequered history, 1850s - 1990sCarolyn Strange and Jennifer A. StephenEpilogue: Where did eugenics go?Alison BashfordChronologyIndex