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Augustus Henry Keane (1833–1912) was an Irish Roman Catholic journalist and linguist, known for his ethnological writings.

Early life

He was born in Cork, Ireland. He was educated in Cork, Dublin and Jersey, and graduated at the Roman Catholic College, Dublin.

In Glasgow

Keane was editor of the Glasgow Free Press from 1862. He and his deputy Peter McCorry turned the first Scottish Catholic newspaper into a campaigning sheet, setting the Irish priests against the Scottish priests, and in particular the vicars-apostolic. The paper supported the nationalist Patrick Lavelle, who used its pages to attack Paul Cullen. John Murdoch, the Vicar Apostolic of the Western District was another particular target, the background being the increasing number of Irish Catholic priests in Scotland, and an increasing Irish immigrant population. Keane and McCorry found themselves in court proceedings.

The policy of the Glasgow Free Press under Keane and then McCorry had only short-term direct effects, and the paper was shut down after the intervention by Cardinal Manning towards the end of the 1860s; but the divisions it revealed have been taken as important in the move towards restoring the Scottish Catholic hierarchy, which occurred in 1878. Keane may have drifted from the Catholic faith in later life.

Linguist, geographer, ethnologist

He studied in Germany and taught at Hameln; and became a linguist. He taught languages including Hindustani at the Hartley Institute, Southampton; a chair of Hindustani was created for him at University College, London, in 1883, but he left it in 1885. He then spent a period lecturing on ethnology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Keane belonged to the "philological" group of British linguists, with Richard Garnett, Thomas Hewitt Key, Isaac Taylor, John Horne Tooke and Hensleigh Wedgwood. He began attending meetings of the a Royal Anthropological Institute in 1879, read papers there, and became a Fellow, serving as vice-president. He was granted a Civil List pension in 1897. Keane was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Views

Keane's racial theories were published first in Nature in 1879–81. He affirmed the specific unity of human beings in his 1896 text Ethnology, even if his views had some other implications. He produced racial typologies, in his expository writings; they were more systematic than those of John George Wood and Robert Brown, and were intended for rote learning.

Keane was out of step with the anthropology of the time, preferring linguistic data to that of physical anthropology and came to occupy a marginal position in the emerging scientific discipline. On the other hand, his efforts at popularising anthropology were praised by Sir Harry Johnston.

Keane's views were invoked by F. W. Bell in South Africa from 1908, with those of Robert Bennett Bean, and played a part in the move of the Transvaal Native Affairs Society towards a segregationist position. He was known for his sympathies displayed in The Boer States (1900), in which he attributed the long-term issue behind the Boer Wars to the attitude of Lord Glenelg in the 1830s. The stance taken by Keane, who has been described as a "virulent racist", was conveyed in person when he addressed the Transvaal Native Affairs Society in September 1909. He cited Robert Wilson Shufeldt of Virginia, author of The Negro a Menace to American Civilization (1907), aiding the Bell faction against the moderates around Howard Pim.

Works

• Handbook of the History of the English Language (1875)
• Ethnology of the Egyptian Sudan (1884)
• Codex Fejrvry-Mayer: An Old Mexican Picture Manuscript in the Liverpool Free Public Museums (12014/M) with Joseph Florimond Loubat
• The Early Chartered Companies (A.D. 1296-1858) (1896, 2002 reprint), with George Cawston
• Man, Past and Present (1899); this work has been called "overtly racist", and a later edition was revised by Alison Hingston Quiggin and A. C. Haddon removed some of the extreme statements.
• Ethnology. In Two Parts: I. Fundamental Ethnical Problems. II. The Primary Ethnical Groups (1896)
• Asia: Northern and Eastern Asia, vol. 1; Asia: Southern and Western Asia, vol. 2 (1896)
• The Boer States: land and people (1900)
• The Gold of Ophir - Whence Brought and by Whom? (1901)
• The World's Peoples: A popular account of their bodily and mental characters

Translations

• Ancient Peruvian art: contributions to the archaeology of the empire of the Incas, translator, original by Arthur Baessler
• Philosophy Historical and Critical (1879), translator, original by André Lefèvre
• The Science of Language. Linguistics, Philology, Etymology, translator, original by Abel Hovelacque
• The Antichrist Legend; a chapter in Christian and Jewish folklore, translator, original by Wilhelm Bousset
• The Early Teutonic, Italian and French Masters (reprinted 2004), translator from the work of Robert Dohme
• The Chittagong Hill Tribes: results of a journey made in the year 1882 (1885), translator, original by Emil Riebeck
• Travels in Africa during the years 1882-1886, translator, original by Wilhelm Junker
• The Childhood of Man, translator, original by Leo Frobenius
• Diego Velazquez and His Times, translator, original by Carl Justi.

He contributed ethnological appendices to the volumes of Edward Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel, which was based on Friedrich von Hellwald's Die Erde und ihre Völker. An English edition of La Nouvelle Géographic universelle, la terre et les hommes, 19 vols. (1875—94) of Elisée Reclus appeared as The Earth and Its Inhabitants the first volumes were edited by Ernest George Ravenstein, the rest by Keane. With Sir Stanley Reed he edited Bradshaw's Through Routes to the Chief Cities of the World (1907).

A prolific author, Keane wrote encyclopedia articles, in particular for the Encyclopædia Britannica. His articles in the 9th edition (1875–89) included "Negro", which included details of the racial theory of Filippo Manetta., as well as articles on "Malay Peninsula", "Mexico (Republic of Mexico)", "Mexico (City of Mexico)", "Sudan" and "Yoruba. He also wrote magazine articles and textbooks; he contributed 800 entries to Cassell's Storehouse of General Information. In 1905 he was involved in the part publishing venture The Living Races of Man, illustrated with 800 photographs.

References

1. ^ George Grant MacCurdy, James Mooney and A. B. Legía - Antonio Flores, Anthropologic Miscellanea p. 198, in American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1912), pp. 192-209. Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
2. MacCurdy, George Grant; Mooney, James; Legía, A. Bantonio Flores (1912). "Anthropologic Miscellanea". American Anthropologist. 14 (1): 192–209. doi:10.1525/aa.1912.14.1.02a00130. JSTOR 659716.
3. ^ Haddon, A. C. (1912). "Dr. A. H. KEANE". Nature. 88 (2206): 488. Bibcode:1912Natur..88..488H. doi:10.1038/088488a0.
4. ^ "Papers Past — Otago Witness — 24 Huitanguru 1904 — A GREAT ETHNOLOGIST". Paperspast.natlib.govt.nz. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
5. ^ Swift, Roger; Gilley, Sheridan (1 January 1985). The Irish in the Victorian City. ISBN 9780709933335. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
6. Bowen, Desmond (24 October 1983). Paul Cardinal Cullen and the Shaping of Modern Irish Catholicism. ISBN 9780889201361. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
7. Gallagher, Tom (1987). Glasgow, the Uneasy Peace. Manchester University Press. p. 43. ISBN 9780719023965. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
8. "Journal and appendix to Scotichronicon and Monasticon". Retrieved 13 December 2014.
9. Samuel J. Rogal, The Rushton M. Dorman, Esq. library sale catalogue (1886): the study of the dispersal of a nineteenth-century American private library, Volume 1 (2001), p. 280;
10. Rogal, Samuel J. (2002). The Rushton M. Dorman, Esq. Library Sale Catalogue (1886). ISBN 9780773473799. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
11. Auroux, Sylvain (1989). Histoire des ides linguistiques: L'hgmonie du comparatisme. ISBN 9782870097250. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
12. "List of AI fellows 1901". England.prm.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
13. ^ Bernard V. Lightman, Victorian Science in Context (1997), pp. 224–8; Google Books.
14. ^ Paul B. Rich, Hope and Despair: English-speaking intellectuals and South African politics, 1896-1976 (1993), p. 20; Google Books.
15. Saul Dubow, Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa (1995), pp. 89–91; Google Books.
16. Keane, Augustus Henry (1875). Handbook of the History of the English Language. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
17. Cawston, George; Keane, Augustus Henry (2001). The Early Chartered Companies (A.D. 1296-1858). ISBN 9781584771968. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
18. Mandler, Peter; Mandler, Reader in Modern British History Peter (2006). The English National Character. Yale University Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-0300120523. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
19. Keane, Augustus Henry (1900). Man, Past and Present. University Press. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
20. Man Past and Present. 1899. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
21. Keane, Augustus Henry; Haddon, Alfred Cort (1920). Man, past and present. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
22. "Man past and present : Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry), 1833-1912 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive". Internet Archive. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
23. "Man, past and present : Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry), 1833-1912 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive". Internet Archive. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
24. "The Project Gutenberg eBook of Man Past and Present, by A. H. Keane".
25. "Man, Past and Present". Internet Archive.
26. Keane, A. H. (9 June 2011). Ethnology. ISBN 9781107648135. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
27. Keane, Augustus Henry (1896). Ethnology. In Two Parts. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
28. Keane, Augustus Henry (1896). Ethnology. In Two Parts. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
29. Keane, Augustus Henry (1901). Ethnology. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
30. Keane, Augustus Henry (1896). Ethnology. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
31. Keane, Augustus Henry (1896). Ethnology. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
32. "Ethnology : Keane,A.H. : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive". Internet Archive. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
33. Sapir, Edward; Darnell, Regna; Irvine, Judith T. (1978). Ethnology. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
34. Ränk, Aino (1975). Ethnology 1945-1975. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
35. Keane, Augustus Henry (1896). Asia: Southern and Western Asia. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
36. Keane, Augustus Henry (1901). The Gold of Ophir. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
37. A. H. Keane. The World's Peoples: A Popular Account of Their Bodily & Mental Characters, Beliefs, Traditions, Political and Social Institutions. Forgotten Books. ISBN 978-1-4400-4417-5.
38. "Digital Collections from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries". Libmma.contentdm.oclc.org. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
39. "Philosophy historical and critical, by André Lefèvre. Tr. with an introduction by A. H. Keane, B. A : Lefevre, Andre, 1834-1904 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive". Internet Archive. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
40. Keane, A. H. (1 December 2004). The Early Teutonic, Italian And French Masters. ISBN 9781417963010. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
41. Reclus, Elisée (1891). The Earth and Its Inhabitants ...: Asiatic Russia: Caucasia, Aralo-Caspian ... Retrieved 13 December 2014.
42. Reclus, Jean Jacques Élisée (1876). The earth and its inhabitants. The universal geography, ed. by E.G ... Retrieved 13 December 2014.
43. "Elisee Reclus Page; Jean-Jacques-lise Reclus (1830-1905) (French geographer, anarchiste, philosopher & poet) from the Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia [Elise; Elize Rekliu]". Recollectionbooks.com. Archived from the original on 9 December 2015. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
45. "The Languages of Psyche". Ark.cdlib.org. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
46. "The Languages of Psyche "d0e17170"". Retrieved 13 December 2014.
47. Important Contributors to the Britannica, 9th and 10th Editions, 1902encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 1 April 2022.

External links

• Works by Augustus Henry Keane at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Augustus Henry Keane at the Internet Archive
• Online Books page

• 1833 births
• 1912 deaths
• Irish journalists
• Linguists from Ireland
• Academics of University College London