Racial fears in the Edwardian Era

To improve a so-called race, human beings should get rid off those who endanger the proper development of human species from "man" to "superman" - to use George Bernard Shaw's play's title. They forgot, however, that human beings and animal have an inherent and enormous difference: the first are gifted with self-awareness, the latter are not. This difference renders the subject of racial improvement through human intervention ethically controversial. If a bird can throw a young out of the nest, can a mother put an unfit child in a bin? And what to do about the unfit who are already adults and able to give birth in their turn? All these questions were raised by the first eugenicists of England.

Through different texts from eugenicists, politicians or journalists, we will try to understand what eugenics' basis was and to what extend it intended to change people's mind and habits at the very beginning of the twentieth century. The question is not whether it is a good thing or not but to understand how race impurity's fears emerged in the mind of people and how they wanted to cope with it.