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.
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.
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]
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]
John Fiske was an American philosopher and historian. He was heavily influenced by Herbert Spencer and applied Spencer's concepts of evolution to his own writings on linguistics, philosophy, religion, and history.
William John Swainson FLS, FRS, was an English ornithologist, malacologist, conchologist, entomologist, and artist.
William Elford Leach was an English zoologist and marine biologist.
Sir William Jardine, 7th Baronet of Applegarth FRS FRSE FLS FSA was a Scottish naturalist. He is known for his editing of a long series of natural history books, The Naturalist's Library.
Polygenism is a theory of human origins which posits the view that the human races are of different origins (polygenesis). This view is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity. Modern scientific views find little merit in any polygenic model due to an increased understanding of speciation in a human context, with the monogenic "Out of Africa" hypothesis and its variants being the most widely accepted models for human origins. Polygenism has historically been heavily used in service of white supremacist ideas and practices, denying a common origin between European and non-European peoples. It can be distinguished between Biblical polygenism, describing a Pre-Adamite or Co-Adamite origin of certain races in the context of the Genesis narrative of Adam and Eve, and scientific polygenism, attempting to find a taxonomic basis for ideas of racial science.
Monogenism or sometimes monogenesis is the theory of human origins which posits a common descent for all human races. The negation of monogenism is polygenism. This issue was hotly debated in the Western world in the nineteenth century, as the assumptions of scientific racism came under scrutiny both from religious groups and in the light of developments in the life sciences and human science. It was integral to the early conceptions of ethnology.
Hugh Charles McBarron Jr. (1902–1992) was an American commercial artist. Known for his wide body of work featuring the United States Armed Forces, he is considered by many to have been the "dean of military illustrators."
The Wernerian Natural History Society, commonly abbreviated as the Wernerian Society, was a learned society interested in the broad field of natural history, and saw papers presented on various topics such as mineralogy, plants, insects, and scholarly expeditions. The Society was an offshoot of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and from its beginnings it was a rather elite organization.
John Mollo was a British costume designer and writer on the history of the military uniform. He is perhaps best known for creating the costumes for the first two installments of the Star Wars original film trilogy. Mollo has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design twice, for Star Wars (1977) and Gandhi (1982), winning both times.
Llewellynn Frederick William Jewitt was a British illustrator, engraver, natural scientist and author of The Ceramic Art of Great Britain (1878). His output was prodigious and covered a large range of interests.
Thomas Prince was a New England clergyman, scholar and historian noted for his historical text A Chronological History of New England, in the Form of Annals. Called 'an American pioneer in scientific historical writing', Prince influenced historians such as Jeremy Belknap and Thomas Hutchinson, and his Annals was still being used as a reference text as late as 1791.
Digby George Smith, who also used the pseudonym Otto von Pivka, was a British military historian. The son of a British career soldier, he was born in Hampshire, England, but spent several years in India and Pakistan as a child and youth. As a "boy soldier", he entered training in the British Army at the age of 16. He was later commissioned in the Royal Corps of Signals, and held several postings with the British Army of the Rhine.
Samuel Kneeland was a naturalist of the United States.
Samuel Kneeland was an American printer and publisher of The Boston Gazette and Weekly Journal. Kneeland obtained much of his work printing laws and other official documents for the Province of Massachusetts Bay colonial government for about two decades. He printed the first Bible in the English language ever produced in the American colonies, along with many other religious and spiritual works, including the Book of Psalms. He was also noted for introducing a number of innovations to newspaper printing and journalism. He was one of many colonial printers who were strongly opposed to and outspoken against the Stamp Act in 1765. Kneeland, primarily, along with his sons, were responsible for printing the greater majority of books, magazines and pamphlets published in Boston during his lifetime.
Peter Brown was an English naturalist and natural history illustrator of Danish ancestry who worked mainly in London.
T. W. Wood was an English zoological illustrator responsible for the accurate drawings in major nineteenth century works of natural history including Darwin's The Descent of Man and Wallace's The Malay Archipelago. He studied the courtship display behaviour of pheasants, observing them closely and publishing the first description of the double-banded argus pheasant. He illustrated many books, often of birds but also of moths and mammals.
Samuel Williams was a British draughtsman and wood-engraver.
Plymouth Athenaeum, located in Plymouth, England, is a society dedicated to the promotion of learning in the fields of science, technology, literature and art.
Samuel Rowe was a farmer's son who became a bookseller, vicar and antiquarian of Devon, England. He is known for his Perambulation of Dartmoor, which for many years was the standard work on the prehistoric and later sites to be found on the moor.
Joshua Brooking Rowe was an English antiquarian and naturalist, researching and writing about history and wildlife in Devon.
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