'The Skull Measurer's Mistake': Reading Race, Collecting Cultures - The Roving Reader Files

The Roving Reader Files category of blog posts is produced by Alison Newby (under the pseudonym The Roving Reader) in collaboration with Hannah Niblett (Collections Access Officer, Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre). The former provides the text and the latter provides the images. The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre is an open access University of Manchester facility, and The Roving Reader Files are designed as public engagement materials. The intention is to introduce research skills and terminology to the general user/reader in an entertaining yet informative manner by revealing hidden stories, making unusual connections and sharing insights into using the Centre's collection for research. The post "The Skull Measurer's Mistake" examines the intellectual currents around the ethnic stereotyping which characterised the popular imagination on both sides of the Atlantic during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - which were covered by Sven Lindqvist in his 1997 book The Skull Measurer's Mistake and Other Portraits of Men and Women Who Spoke Out Against Racism. That these intellectual currents and ethnic stereotypes scarred the lives of real people in the real world, is illustrated by examining the experiences of colonial Black British Honduran foresters working in Scotland during World War II as recorded by Amos Ford in his 1985 book Telling the Truth. The Life and Times of the British Honduran Forestry Unit in Scotland (1941-44). "The Skull Measurer's Mistake" is followed by an addendum entitled "Only 12 Years a Slave?"