How has social Darwinism played a role in world history?
Darwin’s theory held that the “natural selection” of species resulted from a “struggle for existence,” the complex interplay of inherited characteristics and environmental conditions. By the 1870s some of Darwin’s readers had begun to think that the “struggle for existence” applied not just to biological species, but to human society. To these “Social Darwinists,” Darwin’s ideas could be applied to social classes, ethnic groups, racial groups, and nations. At a time when Europeans were conquering vast empires, their industrial civilization far outstripped the technologies of non-Western peoples, and immense gaps between rich and poor characterized their own societies, Social Darwinism distorted a scientific theory into a justification of existing relations of power based on class, nation, and race. Social Darwinism, which dominated American thought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was used to justify extreme nationalism, racism, male dominance, war, gross economic inequality,
