Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the doomed race theory, 1880-1939

Abstract

White Australians once confidently - if regretfully - believed that the Aboriginal people were doomed to extinction.

In this challenging analysis Russell McGregor explores the origins and the gradual demise of the 'doomed race' theory, which was unquestioned in nineteenth-century European thinking and remained uncontested until the 1930s. White perceptions had been shaped by Enlightenment ideas about progress, Darwin's new theories on the survival of the fittest, and other European philosophical concepts. These ideas exerted a powerful influence and shaped white Australian attitudes to, and policies for, Aboriginal people.