Darwin’s Savages

…is officially out!

Good evening everyone. There are times when self-promotion isn’t just an indulgence, but an obligation. And given that yesterday was the publication day for my book Darwin’s Savages: Science, Race and the Conquest of Patagonia, I hope you will indulge me.

Because this is the result of more than two years of thinking, writing and travelling…sometimes simultaneously. And I would be doing myself an injustice if I didn’t bring it to your attention, in the hope that the blurb and some endorsements might persuade you to buy it here

In December 1832, Charles Darwin sailed into Tierra del Fuego, at the tip of South America, where he first encountered ‘Indians’. ‘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.

Matthew Carr explores how these experiences influenced Darwin’s writings, and the theories of scientific racism that others drew from his work. In a sweeping account of soldiers, missionaries, anthropologists and skull-collecting scientists, he traces the connections between colonial expansionism and the tragic ‘extinction’ of South America’s conquered peoples.

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

Reviews

‘Powerful, illuminating and perceptive, Darwin’s Savages cuts through the mythologisation and misrepresentation around the brutal subjugation of Patagonia’s Indigenous peoples. Carr deftly examines the legacy of Darwin in this hard-hitting story of colonisation, science, racism and resistance, while weaving in vivid first-hand descriptions and contemporary reportage.’ — Shafik Meghji, author of Crossed Off the Map and Small Earthquakes

‘With graceful, incisive prose and corroborative historical research, Carr walks the reader through the brutal colonisation of the Indigenous peoples of Patagonia, a story too long hidden from history and at the same time heartbreakingly familiar to First Peoples everywhere.’ — Michelle Good, author of Five Little Indians and Truth Telling

‘Blending correspondences, history and lived experiences, this engaging narrative crosses times and places to illuminate the entanglement of Darwin’s ideas with colonialism and racism, and their impact on the Indigenous peoples of Patagonia, then and now.’ — Agustín Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University, and author of Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You and Sex is a Spectrum