1. Aboriginal matters -- 2. Pre-Darwinian theories on the extinction of primitive races -- 3. Vanishing Americans -- 4. Humanitarian causes: antislavery and saving aboriginals -- 5. The Irish famine -- 6. The dusk of the dreamtime -- 7. Islands of death and the devil -- 8. Darwin and after -- 9. White twilights
Summary
Patrick Brantlinger here examines the commonly held nineteenth-century view that all "primitive" or "savage" races around the world were doomed sooner or later to extinction. Warlike propensities and presumed cannibalism were regarded as simultaneously noble and suicidal, accelerants of the downfall of other races after contact with white civilization. Brantlinger finds at the heart of this belief the stereotype of the self-exterminating savage, or the view that "savagery" is a sufficient explanation for the ultimate disappearance of "savages" from the grand theater of world history. -- from back cover
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-241) and index
