Race

Introduction

Richard Watson was born in Lincolnshire in 1781. This is an extract from a sermon preached by Watson before the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in the New Chapel, City Road, London, April 28, 1824. Although Watson acknowledged Blumenbach’s data about the achievement of individual Negroes, his principal argument remained biblical authority and the idea of monogenesis, which still held sway at this stage. Other competing ‘scientific’ investigations of the origins and development of mankind, which challenged the idea of monogenesis, became increasingly influential. Watson supported the campaign against slavery, and argued that religion itself could help the slaves in their struggle for freedon. Watson died in London in 1833.

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