Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View: Being the Robert Boyle Lecture Delivered Before the Oxford University Junior Scientific Club on November 17, 1919

Delivered at Oxford in November 1919, just weeks after the Treaty of Versailles redrew the map of Europe, this lecture captures a pivotal moment in how educated people understood human difference. Sir Arthur Keith, one of Britain's most distinguished anthropologists, applies the evolutionary frameworks of his era to the explosive question of why nations and races clash. He draws on case studies from across the British Empire and the United States, arguing that the friction between groups stems from deep, inherited tribal instincts that civilization has never fully suppressed. The result is a work that now reads as both a historical artifact and a stark reminder of how scientific authority can be weaponized to justify hierarchy. Keith's reasoning was considered rigorous and progressive in its time; today it stands as a window into the intellectual architecture that shaped colonialism, eugenics, and the racial theories that would prove so devastating in the decades to follow. For readers interested in the history of ideas, the evolution of anthropological thought, or the roots of modern identity politics, this lecture offers an unsettling but essential glimpse into the past.