Darwin's Savages

Science, Race and the Conquest of Patagonia

By: Matthew Carr

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eBook | 29 May 2025 | Edition Number 1

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In December 1832, Charles Darwin sailed into Tierra del Fuego, down at the tip of South America, and encountered 'Indians' for the first time. 'I would not have believed how entire the difference between savage and civilised man is,' he wrote. 'It is greater than between a wild and [a] domesticated animal.' But he was shocked by the 'war of extermination' he witnessed in northern Patagonia, waged by the colonising army of Buenos Aires.

Darwin's Savagesexplores how these experiences influenced Darwin's writings, as well as the justifications for racial 'exterminations' that others drew from his work. In a sweeping account of soldiers, missionaries, anthropologists and skullcollecting scientists, Matthew Carr traces the connections between colonial expansionism and scientific racism, and the tragic 'extinction' of indigenous peoples in one of the most remote places on Earth.

Combining travelogue, history and essay, this is a compelling journey through Patagonia past and present, from indigenous graveyards and military memorials to archaeological sites and natural history museums. Amid global battles for historical memory, culture wars over race and empire, and ongoing struggles for indigenous rights, Carr chronicles the conquest of Argentina's First Peoples—and the ideas that made it possible.