Alfred Russel Wallace’s Darwinian Opposition to Eugenics

This article revisits the question of Alfred Russel Wallace's relationship to eugenics and explores the basis of Wallace's consistent rejection of attempts to label him a eugenicist. Whereas some scholars have identified an 'ambiguity' or 'tension' between Wallace's hereditarianism and his libertarianism and maintained - despite Wallace's statements to the contrary - that he was, in some senses, a eugenicist, this article argues that Wallace's oft-repeated claims he was not a eugenicist are fully justified. By exploring Wallace's relationship with Francis Galton using a hitherto neglected correspondence between the two concerning the establishment of a proposed laboratory, and Wallace's criticism of non-Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms in the writings of William Bateson and others, this article situates Wallace's opposition to eugenics in his broader ultra-Darwinian agenda. The article concludes by arguing that it is misleading to characterise Wallace as a eugenicist, and that doing so tends to obscure and confuse our understanding of his thought.