Charles Hamilton Smith

English artist, naturalist, antiquary, illustrator, soldier, and spy

For other people with the same name, see Charles Smith (disambiguation).

"Privates of the Greek Light Infantry Regiment"
from Costumes of the Army of the British Empire

Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Hamilton Smith, KH, KW, FRS, FLS, (26 December 1776 in East Flanders, in the United Provinces of the Netherlands – 21 September 1859 in Plymouth) was an English artist, naturalist, antiquary, illustrator, soldier, and spy.

## Military service

[edit]

His military career began in 1787, when he studied at the Austrian academy for artillery and engineers at Mechelen and Leuven in Belgium. Although his military service, which ended in 1820 and included the Napoleonic Wars, had him travel extensively (including the West Indies, Canada, and United States), much of his time was spent at a desk job in Britain. One of his noteworthy achievements was an 1800 experiment to determine which colour should be used for military uniforms. The increasing accuracy of firearms, especially rifles, brought advantages to shades which offer a less distinctive target – by testing the accuracy of a rifle company against grey, green, and red targets, he showed scientifically the advantages of grey (and to a lesser extent, green) uniforms over red ones common at the time, and recommended that grey be adopted for riflemen and light infantry. The British Army did not heed his advice, with green becoming the colour associated with light infantry. Initially commissioned into the 60th (Royal American) Regiment, ten years later Smith transferred to the 6th Foot.

## Antiquary, naturalist, and illustrator

[edit]

Thirteenth century costumes Halmaturus Rutilans

As a prolific self-taught illustrator, he is also known in military history circles for Costume of the Army of the British Empire, produced towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and an accurate depiction of contemporary British uniform. As an antiquarian, he also produced, in collaboration with Samuel Rush Meyrick, Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands, 1815, and The Ancient Costume of England, with historical illustrations of medieval knights, ladies, ships, and battles. The majority of his vast body of work (he estimated it was over 38,000 drawings) was not military in character, but largely passed into obscurity. Notebooks of his observations as a naturalist have survived, as well as antiquarian illustrations of civilian life. He also wrote on the history of the Seven Years' War and the natural history of dogs.[1] Smith was of Flemish origin; he wrote the military part of Cox's Marlborough and many military and natural history books.[2]

## The Natural History of the Human Species

[edit]

Smith published The Natural History of the Human Species in 1848. In this book, he maintained that three fundamentally distinct human types had always existed: the Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Negro. Smith was nominally a monogenist, maintaining that the creation of humans was a single event, rather than multiple, but he was less convinced by the standard theories of the time coming from Count Buffon and Georges Cuvier on interfertility and species;[3] the book also referred to the polygenist views held by Samuel George Morton.[4]

Smith's book was reprinted in America, where Samuel Kneeland wrote an 84-page introduction to it. Kneeland laid out evidence that he maintained supported polygenist creationism, and argued that the Bible is compatible with multiple Adams.[5]

On retirement, Smith settled in Plymouth, joining the Plymouth Institution (now the Plymouth Athenaeum).[6] He delivered lectures and many of his 20 volumes of MSS notes, letters, and papers were deposited in the institution. His collection was destroyed when the Plymouth Athenaeum was bombed during the Blitz in 1941.[7]

## See also

[edit]

* Category:Taxa named by Charles Hamilton Smith

## References

[edit]

* "Smith, Charles Hamilton" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

1. ^ "Charles Hamilton Smith". Library of Congress. Retrieved 19 August 2009.
2. ^ DNB Epitome
3. ^ Damon Ieremia Salesa, Racial Crossings: Race, intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire (2011), pp. 148–9; Google Books.
4. ^ Gustav Jahoda, Crossroads Between Culture and Mind: Continuities and Change in Theories of Human Nature, 1993, p. 93.
5. ^ David N. Livingstone, Adam's Ancestors: race, religion, and the politics of human origins (2008), pp. 97–99
6. ^ "Historic People". Plymouth Athenaeum. Archived from the original on 6 November 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
7. ^ "Historic People". Plymouth Athenaeum. Archived from the original on 6 November 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.

* v
* t
* e

Obsolete definitions of race

* Racism
* Scientific racism
* Pseudoscience

Color terminology|

* Black
* Bronze
* Brown
* Olive
* Red
* White

Concepts|

* Australoid
* Capoid
* Caucasoid
* Alpine
* Arabid
* Armenoid
* Aryan
* Atlantid
* Caspian
* Dinaric
* East Baltic
* Ethiopid
* Hamites
* Indid
* Iranid
* Mediterranean
* Nordic
* Semites
* Turanid
* Malay
* Mongoloid
* Proto-Mongoloid
* Sinodonty and Sundadonty
* Negroid
* Negrito

Sociological|

* in India
* Passing
* Racial discrimination
* Racism
* Racial stereotypes
* Colorism
* Master race
* Nazism and race
* Racial hygiene
* Whiteness studies
* Négritude

Writers|

* Louis Agassiz
* John Baker
* Erwin Baur
* John Beddoe
* Robert Bennett Bean
* François Bernier
* Renato Biasutti
* Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
* Franz Boas
* Daniel Garrison Brinton
* Paul Broca
* Alice Mossie Brues
* Halfdan Bryn
* Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
* Charles Caldwell
* Petrus Camper
* Samuel A. Cartwright
* Houston Stewart Chamberlain
* Sonia Mary Cole
* Carleton S. Coon
* Georges Cuvier
* Jan Czekanowski
* Charles Davenport
* Joseph Deniker
* Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt
* Anténor Firmin
* Eugen Fischer
* Francis Galton
* Stanley Marion Garn
* Reginald Ruggles Gates
* George Gliddon
* Arthur de Gobineau
* Madison Grant
* John Grattan
* Hans F. K. Günther
* Ernst Haeckel
* Frederick Ludwig Hoffman
* Earnest Hooton
* Julian Huxley
* Thomas Henry Huxley
* Calvin Ira Kephart
* Robert Knox
* Robert E. Kuttner
* Georges Vacher de Lapouge
* Fritz Lenz
* Carl Linnaeus
* Cesare Lombroso
* Bertil Lundman
* Felix von Luschan
* Dominick McCausland
* John Mitchell
* Ashley Montagu
* Lewis H. Morgan
* Samuel George Morton
* Josiah C. Nott
* Karl Pearson
* Roger Pearson
* Oscar Peschel
* Isaac La Peyrère
* Charles Pickering
* Ludwig Hermann Plate
* Alfred Ploetz
* James Cowles Prichard
* Otto Reche
* Gustaf Retzius
* William Z. Ripley
* Alfred Rosenberg
* Benjamin Rush
* Henric Sanielevici
* Heinrich Schmidt
* Ilse Schwidetzky
* Charles Gabriel Seligman
* Giuseppe Sergi
* Samuel Stanhope Smith
* Herbert Spencer
* Morris Steggerda
* Lothrop Stoddard
* William Graham Sumner
* Thomas Griffith Taylor
* Paul Topinard
* John H. Van Evrie
* Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer
* Alexander Winchell
* Ludwig Woltmann

Publications|

* An Essay upon the Causes of the Different Colours of People in Different Climates (1744)
* The Outline of History of Mankind (1785)
* Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question (1849)
* An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855)
* The Races of Europe (Ripley, 1899)
* The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899)
* Race Life of the Aryan Peoples (1907)
* Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911)
* Castes in India (1916)
* The Passing of the Great Race (1916)
* The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920)
* The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930)
* Annihilation of Caste (1936)
* An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus (1943)
* The Race Question (1950)

Related|

* Ethnogenesis
* Eugenics
* Great chain of being
* History of anthropometry
* Miscegenation
* Monogenism
* Multiracial
* Polygenism
* Pre-Adamite
* Pre-modern conceptions of whiteness

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF
* FAST

National|

* Germany
* United States
* France
* BnF data
* Australia
* Portugal
* Netherlands
* Vatican
* Israel

Artists|

* ULAN
* RKD Artists
* Scientific illustrators

People|

* Trove
* Deutsche Biographie
* DDB

Other|

* IdRef
* SNAC

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template