| Charles Gabriel Seligman | |
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Charles Gabriel Seligman
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| Born | 24 December 1873 London |
| Died | 19 September 1940 |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | ethnology |
| Institutions | Cambridge University of London |
| Alma mater | St. Thomas' Hospital |
| Notable awards | Fellow of the Royal Society[1] |
Charles Gabriel Seligman FRS[1] (24 December 1873 – 19 September 1940) was a British ethnologist. Born in London, Seligman studied medicine at St. Thomas' Hospital.
After several years as a physician and pathologist, Seligman volunteered his services to the 1898 Cambridge University expedition to the Torres Strait.[2] Later, he joined expeditions to New Guinea (1904), Ceylon (1906-1908), and Sudan (1909-1912, again in 1921-1922). In 1905 he married Brenda Zara Salaman, who accompanied him on many of his expeditions and who he credited in his publications.
He served as chair of Ethnology at the University of London from 1913 to 1934.
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Seligman was an assiduous proponent of Hamitic theory, which held that caucasian North African "hamites" were responsible for all significant cultural developments in Africa. In his book The Races of Africa (1930) he wrote:
"Apart from relatively late Semitic influence...the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites, its history is the record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushmen, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the Beja and Somali....The incoming Hamites were pastoral 'Europeans' - arriving wave after wave - better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes."[3][4]
Seligman asserted that the Negro race was essentially static and agricultural, but that the wandering Hamitic "pastoral Caucasians" had introduced most of the advanced features found in central African cultures, including metal working, irrigation and complex social structures.[3][5]