Late eighteenth-century developments in comparative osteology anticipated the growing significance attached to the conformation of the skull by an embryonic anthropology, initially for its own sake (as with Blumenbach) and before long as signifier of the size of the brain (as with Cuvier). Cuvier (1817b:270, 273) neatly encapsulated the diagnostic transition from aesthetics to anatomy in association with a shift in the terminology of human difference: the head was 'the most sure means of distinction' between races because it had been 'better studied' and was 'the basis on which we have always classed nations'; 'today', though, 'we distinguish the races by the skeleton of the head'. The transitional phase is manifest in an official Mémoire addressed by the French Académie des Sciences in 1785 to the savants about to embark with La Pérouse on his voyage round the world. The memoir counsels voyagers to extend the 'comparison' of diverse human varieties — a Buffonian innovation^[47] — beyond the usual limits of the 'external characters' of colour, stature, and form and instead undertake 'anatomical researches' into 'internal' variations in the 'form of the bones of the head'. To this end, they should try to obtain the head and hyoid bones of a representative corpse from every 'nation' which obviously differed in facial or head shape from those of the 'temperate countries of Europe' — this last phrase alluded to the climatic theory of collective human difference also primarily associated with Buffon.^[48]

Blumenbach (1795:198) insisted on the importance of 'careful anatomical investigation of genuine skulls of different nations' in the study of human variety because the skull had structural primacy as 'the firm and stable foundation of the head'. A single specimen (1806:60, 70) — 'my beautiful head of a young Georgian female' (see Figure 4, Chapter 1) — determined his highly ethnocentric verdict on 'the really most beautiful form of skull' and became his metonym for the 'Caucasian race' who, 'according to the European conception of beauty', were the 'most cultivated of men'. It is clear from his correspondence with Banks that the empirical force of particular skulls and portraits was subordinate to his presumptions about what was 'truly national & characteristical'.^[49] Blumenbach, though, never jettisoned his early attribution of 'almost all' the cranial diversity in 'different peoples' to their 'mode of life' and to 'art'.^[50]

For exotic skulls and portraits, Blumenbach (1795:v-xlii) owed a major debt to Banks whom he acknowledged fulsomely in the third edition of De Generis Humani. A collection of Blumenbach's correspondence with Banks held at the British Library begins with a letter written in French in 1787 outlining Blumenbach's longterm project 'to assemble a collection of skulls of the diverse varieties of the human species' and asking for help in obtaining 'one of these crania of your South Sea islanders'; or 'at least a plaster copy'; 'or a drawing'; 'or just a silhouette'. Banks could not currently oblige with an actual skull but replied that had 'exhorted the Captain & will do the surgeon' of HMS Bounty, which was bound for Tahiti, 'to collect cranie for me wherever he touches'. Blumenbach subsequently lamented the 'unhappy fate' of the Bounty as a 'loss' for his own 'particular interest' as well as 'for humanity itself'. In 1793 and 1794, Banks's 'generousity' enabled Blumenbach to complete two full sets each of 'Five very choice examples of the principal varieties of mankind' by adding two long-promised 'sculls of both the two principal Races' of the South Seas to an earlier gift of a 'pretious Caribean skull', an exemplar of Blumenbach's American variety (see Figure 4, Chapter 1). The two new skulls were those of an Aboriginal man from New Holland and of a Tahitian woman procured by William Bligh (1754-1817) on his second voyage to Tahiti in search of breadfruit. The forthcoming 'new very much improved edition' of De Generis Humani would, Blumenbach told Banks, 'receive his most interesting ornament by a description of this exceeding rare Tahitian cranium'. A further Aboriginal skull was forthcoming from Banks in 1799.^[51]

Cuvier reworked the assumption of savants such as Blumenbach that the major purpose of cranial structure was to provide the solid base for surface facial appearance. He upheld the primacy of the 'bony head' as the 'first base' in comparative anatomy, and by extension the science of race, because it signified the size of the brain and hence the degree of 'intelligence': 'in all mammals, the brain is moulded in the cavity of the skull, which it fills exactly; so that knowledge of the bony part tells us at least about the external form of the brain'; 'intelligence, insofar as it can be observed, is in constant proportion to the relative size of the brain'.^[52]

In 1800, on behalf of the Institut impérial, Cuvier composed an 'Instructive Note' (1978) for impending voyagers, notably the naturalists about to depart for Australian waters with Baudin, and particularly Péron, a medical student and self-styled 'anthropologist' appointed to the expedition at Cuvier's request as zoologist 'specially charged' with comparative anatomy.^[53] The anatomical agenda of the 'Note' resembles that of the Académie's Mémoire of 1785 but its rationale, tone, and terminology are significantly altered. Cuvier took for granted the anatomical 'differences that characterize the races of the human species' and signalled his emerging racial theory that would attribute the 'moral and intellectual faculties' of entire races to systematic cranial variation. He identified three 'great races of the old continent' — 'caucasic' ('white'), 'mongolic' ('yellow'), and 'ethiopic' ('negro') — and allowed the possibility of three others: one in the polar regions ('brown'), one in the Americas ('red'), and one in the South Sea Islands and New Holland, which 'varies from yellow to black'. The remainder of the text outlines a practical program for the voyage anthropologist whose main duty was to fill the gaps in knowledge about humanity, especially of the 'Papous' of New Guinea, 'who have long been regarded as Negroes', and the inhabitants of most of New Holland, the South Sea Islands, and the Strait of Magellan. 'Anatomical specimens', principally of the 'bony head', were the key to establishing the 'physical and moral' characters of each race. They must be systematically assembled in conjunction with 'numerous true portraits' and 'thoughtful, careful observations made on the spot' — unlike the purportedly unreliable descriptions and ethnocentric drawings made by previous voyagers. In practice, the great difficulty of procuring skulls would increase the importance of 'rigorous' portraits made with 'geometric precision'. Cuvier thereupon outlined strict standards for empirical racial portraiture and collecting that a generation of French voyage artists and naturalists in Oceania would endeavour to follow.

In the event, the artists on Baudin's voyage of 1800-04, Nicolas-Martin Petit (1777-1804) and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur (1778-1846), produced a wonderful series of portraits and ethnographic drawings of indigenous people in Timor, Van Diemen's Land, New Holland, and the Cape of Good Hope — the 'most exact of this genre so far known', claimed Péron.^[54] However, the overall anthropological legacy of the voyage was mixed, notwithstanding Cuvier's lavish official praise for Péron's research on the 'various peoples' encountered (Cuvier et al. 1806). The experience of 'difficult and perilous' encounters with 'fierce men' in Van Diemen's Land led Péron, author of most of the official voyage narrative, to endorse the bleak opinion that 'men of nature' whose character was 'not yet softened' by civilization were 'wicked' and could not be 'mistrusted' too much.^[55] He had embarked on his travels professing a qualified primitivist idealism for the 'robust majesty of natural man'; but believing, with Cuvier, that 'moral sensibility' depended largely on 'physical organization'; and hypothesizing that physical and moral 'perfection' were inversely related.^[56] During the voyage, he conducted a series of experiments to test the relative physical strength of different races using a dynamometer recently developed by Edme Regnier to compare the strength of various men and draught animals (Figure 6). In Péron's narrative, the very dubious results of these tests become 'precious' proof of a 'gradation of the social state'. The 'very remarkable weakness' of the 'savages' of Van Diemen's Land consigned them to the 'last degree'. Those of New Holland, apparently not much stronger and 'hardly more civilized', ranked only slightly higher. The next three 'degrees' were assigned in principle to the New Guineans, the New Zealanders, and the Pacific Islanders whom Péron had not seen or tested. He allotted the sixth 'rung' to the 'inhabitants' of Timor and the Moluccas who, despite their 'fairly advanced state of civilization', were 'much weaker' than the English and the French and (presumably) ranked much lower.^[57]

Experience and experiment thus conjoined to qualify Péron's pre-voyage abstract enthusiasm for natural man and make him a passionate advocate for the physical, as well as the moral superiority of the civilized. To this end, his narrative causally links 'physical constitution' with 'social organization' or its supposed 'absence': the alleged physical 'weakness' and 'structural flaw' (excessively thin extremities) of the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land resulted from the deficient diet and life-style of 'the savage state' itself; an improved 'social state' would promote 'abundance' and transform them physically.^[58] At this point, Péron's ideological agenda required a social explanation and he merely toyed with the idea that the structural flaw might be inherent — the result of idiosyncratic 'physical organization'.^[59] This constraint vanished later in the text when he made a zoological argument for 'the absolute difference of the races' in Van Diemen's Land and New Holland and added a footnote promising subsequent proof that the former 'differ essentially from all other known peoples'.^[60] The phrase arguably implies discrete autochthonous origin, a radical but by no means unthinkable concept for the time given recent publication of the polygenist treatises of the English surgeon and anatomist Charles White (1728-1813) and the French military physician Julien-Joseph Virey (1775-1846).^[61] Péron went on to challenge climatic explanations for human variation: the darker skin colour and 'frizzy' rather than 'straight' hair of the Van Diemen's Landers — 'singular anomalies' given the much colder conditions in which they lived — proved 'the imperfection of our systems on the communications of peoples, their transmigrations, and the influence of climate on man'.^[62]

Figure 6: Anon., 'Développement du dynamomètre de Cit^en. Regnier'.^[63]

Engraving. Photograph B. Douglas.

Péron died young with two projected racial studies unrealized: a 'particular history of the peoples of Van Diemen's Land' and a comparative philosophical history of the 'relationship of the physical and the moral' in the various human races.^[64] His voyage narrative nonetheless not only provided empirical sustenance for increasingly negative attitudes towards the indigenous people of Van Diemen's Land and New Holland, both in the metropoles and within the Australian colonies,^[65] but put Péron along with Cuvier in the theoretical vanguard of biological, anthropometric, and racialist tendencies in the science of man. Indeed, modern historians see Péron as a forerunner of the 'medicalized' physical anthropology dominant in France in the second half of the nineteenth century.^[66]

Cuvier wrote relatively little on man but was a central figure in the emerging discipline of anthropology over more than three decades, not least because, as a perpetual secretary in the Institut de France, he acted as selector, instructor, and zoological commentator in relation to the naturalists on scientific voyages, notably those to Oceania. As with Baudin's expedition, traces of his patronage are scattered through the chain of official instructions and commentaries and echoed in the writings of the naturalists on the Restoration voyages of Freycinet, Duperrey, and Dumont d'Urville.^[67] All professed allegiance to the principles and 'general order' of the taxonomic system developed in Cuvier's 'classic' work on comparative anatomy, Le règne animal, 'The Animal Kingdom' (1817a); all took as given his claim for the primacy of physical organization; all endorsed his tripartite classification of 'white', 'yellow', and 'negro' races — 'the most simple', according to Garnot, 'which separates the human species into three great divisions with strongly contrasting characteristics'.^[68] Cuvier's personal dividend from Oceanic voyaging was privileged access to a wealth of antipodean zoological specimens which helped him ground his science of comparative anatomy and cement his reputation as the pre-eminent taxonomist of his generation.^[69] He assured Quoy that he would content himself with 'your leftovers' and 'religiously conserve' the naturalist's manuscripts and drawings for Quoy to publish himself. However, Quoy later commented privately that Cuvier was not always scrupulous about giving voyagers credit for their discoveries.^[70]