Savage Perils: Racial Frontiers and Nuclear Apocalypse in American Culture

285 Pages·2007·1.13 MB·English

by  Patrick B. Sharp

holocaust. Meanwhile, stories about a S The atomic age
“The myth of automatic progress is the PATRICK B. SHARP
technologically empowered “yellow peril” H
unthinking basic narrative told by the
pervaded American culture in the first A
authors of all American history textbooks.
half of the twentieth century, with such R brought the Bomb and spawned stories
Savage Perils shows how this storyline
writers as Jack London depicting the P of nuclear apocalypse to remind us of
developed from Darwin, explains how it
Japanese as an evolutionary threat to SAVAGE impending doom. As Patrick B. Sharp
came to dwell in Cold War science fiction,

white supremacy. reveals, those stories had their origins
illuminates how it reinforces Western

well before Hiroshima, reaching back to
Citing George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” racism, and warns us where it
S
PERILS Charles Darwin and America’s frontier.
Sharp argues that many Americans still might take us next.”
A
believe in the racially charged opposition James W. Loewen In Savage Perils, Sharp examines
between civilization and savagery, and V the racial underpinnings of American
author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your
consider the possibility of nonwhite culture, from the early industrial age to
American History Textbook Got Wrong A
“savages” gaining control of technology the Cold War. He explores the influence
the biggest threat in the “war on terror.” G RACIAL FRONTIERS AND of Darwinism, frontier nostalgia, and
His insightful book shows us that this “An important, insightful, and timely E NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE literary modernism on the history and
conflict is but the latest installment in study. Sharp traces the development IN AMERICAN CULTURE representations of nuclear weaponry.
an ongoing saga that has been at the of racialist concepts of national identity P Taking into account such factors as
heart of American identity from the and righteous war from their origins in anthropological race theory and Asian
E
beginning—and that understanding it nineteenth-century social science, to their immigration, he charts the origins of a
R
is essential if we are to eradicate racist propagation in modern popular culture, worldview that continues to shape our
mythologies from American life. and their application in government I culture and politics.
L
defense policy and warfare in the Third
Patrick B. Sharp is Assistant Professor Sharp dissects Darwin’s arguments
S
World.”
and Associate Chair of the Department regarding the struggle between
of Liberal Studies at California State Richard Slotkin “civilization” and “savagery,” theories

University, Los Angeles. that fueled future-war stories ending
author of Lost Battalions: The Great War and the
in Anglo dominance in Britain and
Jacket design by Tony Roberts Crisis of American Nationality
influenced Turnerian visions of the frontier
in America. H. G. Wells’s 1914 book The
World Set Free imagined a global arms
race centered on an atomic bomb, and
later science fiction writers drew on
frontier imagery to depict life after nuclear
(continued on back flap)
Savage Perils

Savage Perils
Racial Frontiers and Nuclear
Apocalypse in American Culture
Patrick B. Sharp
University of Oklahoma Press : Norman
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sharp, Patrick B., 1967–
Savage perils : racial frontiers and nuclear apocalypse in
American culture / Patrick B. Sharp.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8061-3822-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Racism—United States—History. 2. United States—Race
relations. 3. National characteristics, American. 4. War and
civilization—United States. 5. Nuclear warfare—Social aspects
—United States. 6. Frontier thesis. 7. Darwin, Charles,
1809–1882—Influence. 8. Racism in literature. 9. Nuclear
warfare in literature. 10. Science fiction—History and criticism.
I. Title.
E184.A1S5725 2007
305.800973—dc22
2006026321
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and dura-
bility of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council on Library Resources. ∞
Copyright © 2007 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman,
Publishing Division of the University. All rights reserved. Manufac-
tured in the U.S.A.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
For Mom and Dad,
to whom I owe everything.

Contents
list of figures ix
acknowledgements xi
introduction 3
Part I. Technological Superiority:
Darwin’s Theory and the Representation of Future War
CHAPTER 1 The Triumph of Civilization: Race and
American Exceptionalism before Darwin 11
CHAPTER 2 Man the Toolmaker: Race, Technology,
and Colonialism in Darwin’s The Descent
of Man 31
CHAPTER 3 The Darwinist Frontier: Roosevelt, Turner,
and the Evolution of the West 48
CHAPTER 4 Darwin’s Bulldogs: Evolution and the
Future-War Story in Britain 64
Part II. Survival of the Whitest:American Future-War
Stories and the Representation of World War II
CHAPTER 5 Conquering New Frontiers: Burroughs,
London, and the Race Wars of the Future 89
CHAPTER 6 The Yellow Peril: Science Fiction and
the Response to the Pacific War 107
vii
contents
CHAPTER 7 “AVery Pleasant Way to Die”: Science
Fiction, Race, and the Official Representation
of the Atomic Bomb 121
CHAPTER 8 Beyond the Yellow Peril: John Hersey’s
“Hiroshima” 139
Part III. The Nuclear Frontier:Race and the
Representation of Future War,1945–1959
CHAPTER 9 Official Fictions: Future-War Stories
after Hiroshima 153
CHAPTER 10 Survival and Self-Help: Civil Defense,
White Suburbia, and the Rise of
the Nuclear Frontier 170
CHAPTER 11 The Color of Ground Zero: Civil Defense,
Segregation, and Savagery on the
Nuclear Frontier 195
conclusion 219
notes 225
bibliography 249
index 265
viii
Figures
1. Map from Agassiz’s “Sketch of the Natural Provinces
of the Animal World” (1854) 25
2. Tableau of fauna from Agassiz’s “Sketch of
the Natural Provinces of the Animal World” (1854) 27
3. Sketch of ancient Egyptian racial divisions
from Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind(1854) 28
4. Aerial photographs of Nagasaki before and
after the atomic bombing (1946) 136
5. Photographs of a Japanese soldier with burns caused
by the atomic bomb attack (1946) 138
6. Image from Grandma’s Pantry Was Ready(1955) 205
7. Two pages from the FCDApamphlet Six Steps
to Survival(1955) 206
8. Cover of the OCDM booklet Ten for Survival(1959) 208
9. Diagrams of four fallout shelters (1959) 209
ix