Includes bibliographical references (p. 329-356) and index.

Exotic spectacles and the global context of German anthropology -- Kultur and kulturkampf: the studia humanitas and the people without history -- Nature and the boundaries of the human: monkeys, monsters, and natural peoples -- Measuring skulls: the social role of the antihumanist -- A German republic of science and a German idea of truth: empiricism and sociability in anthropology -- Anthropological patriotism: the Schulstatistik and the racial composition of Germany -- The secret of primitive accumulation: the political economy of anthropological objects -- Commodities, curiosities, and the display of anthropological objects -- History without humanism: culture-historical anthropology and the triumph of the museum -- Colonialism and the limits of the human: the failure of fieldwork.

With the rise of imperialism, the centuries-old European tradition of humanist scholarship as the key to understanding the world was jeopardized. Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there, Andrew Zimmerman argues, that the battle lines of today's "culture wars" were first drawn when anthropology challenged humanism as a basis for human scientific knowledge. Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of "freak shows," Zimmerman demonstrates how German imperiali.

Description based on print version record.