xx, 586 pages ; 26 cm Eugenic thought and practice swept the world from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century in a remarkable trans-national phenomenon. Eugenics informed social and scientific policy across the political spectrum, from liberal welfare measures in emerging social-democratic states to feminist ambitions for birth control, from public health campaigns to totalitarian dreams of the "perfectibility of man." This book dispels for uninitiated readers the automatic and apparently exclusive link between eugenics and the Holocaust. It is the first world history of eugenics and an indispensable core text for both teaching and research Eugenics has accumulated generations of interest as experts attempted to connect biology, human capacity, and policy. In the past and the present, eugenics speaks to questions of race, class, gender and sex, evolution, governance, nationalism, disability, and the social implications of science. In the current climate, in which the human genome project, stem cell research, and new reproductive technologies have proven so controversial, the history of eugenics has much to teach us about the relationship between scientific research, technology, and human ethical decision-making Alison Bashford is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sydney. She has published widely on the modern history of science and medicine, including Purity and Pollution and Imperial Hygiene, and has co-edited Contagion, Isolation, and Medicine at the Border Philippa Levine is the Mary Helen Thompson Centennial Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. Her books include Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire, and The British Empire, Sunrise to Sunset The Oxford Handbooks series is a major new initiative in academic publishing. Each volume offers an authoritative and state-of-the-art survey of current thinking and research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned essays from leading international figures in the discipline give critical examination of the progress and direction of debates. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences. --Book Jacket Includes bibliographical references and index Introduction: Eugenics and the modern world / Philippa Levine & Alison Bashford -- The Darwinian context: evolution and inheritance / Diane B. Paul & James Moore -- Anthropology, colonialism, and eugenics / Phillipa Levine -- Race, science, and eugenics in the twentieth century / Marius Turda -- Eugenics and the science of eugenics / Nils Roll-Hansen -- Fertility control: eugenics, neo-Malthusianism, and feminism / Susanne Klausen & Alison Bashford -- Disability, psychiatry, and eugenics / Mathew Thomson -- Eugenics and the state: policy-making in comparative perspective / Veronique Mottier -- Internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and eugenics / Alison Bashford -- Gender and sexuality: a global tour and compass / Alexandra Minna Stern -- Eugenics and genocide / A. Dirk Moses & Dan Stone -- Eugenics in Britain: the view from the metropole / Lucy Bland & Lesley A. Hall -- South Asia's eugenic past / Sarah Hodges -- Eugenics in Australia and New Zealand: laboratories of racial science / Stephen Garton -- Eugenics in China and Hong Kong: nationalism and colonialism 1890s-1940s / Yuehtsen Juliette Chung -- South Africa: paradoxes in the place of race / Saul Dubow -- Eugenics in colonial Kenya / Chloe Campbell -- Eugenics in postcolonial Southeast Asia / Sunil S. Amrith -- German eugenics and the wider world: beyond the racial state / Paul Weindling -- Eugenics in France and the colonies / Richard S. Fogarty & Michael A. Osborne -- Eugenics in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies / Hans Pols -- The Scandinavian states: reformed eugenics applied / Mattias Tyden -- The first-wave eugenic revolution in southern Europe: science sans frontiers / Maria Sophia Quine -- Eugenics in Eastern Europe 1870s-1945 / Maria Bucur -- Eugenics in Russia and the Soviet Union / Nikolai Krementsov -- Eugenics in Japan: sanguinous repair / Jennifer Robetson -- Eugenics in interwar Iran / Cyrus Schayegh -- Eugenics and the Jews / Raphael Falk -- Eugenics policy and practice in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico / Patience A. Schell -- The path of eugenics in Brazil: dilemmas of miscegenation / Gilberto Hochman, Nisia Trindade Lima, & Marcos Chor Maio -- Eugenics in the United States / Wendy Kline -- Eugenics in Canada: a checkered history 1850s-1990s / Carolyn Strange and Jennifer A. Stephen -- Epilogue: Where did eugenics go / Alison Bashford