Armed with expertise. The militarization of American social research during the Cold War

war – and, on occasion, they died for their ideals. A key paradox nevertheless remained. On the one hand, Mauss, Rivet and their disciples believed that their progressive anthropology would demonstrate conclusively that there was no “scientific” basis to racism. On the other, their ideas and practices – in particular, the organisation of the displays in the Musée de l’Homme – were wedded to hierarchical racial typologies from which they were unable fully to detach themselves. It was only after the horrors of the Second World War that anthropologists in 1950 would come together to write the famous UNESCO race statement, which declared that “for all practical purposes ‘race’ is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth”. In the preceding half-century, attitudes were more fluid and few were willing to commit to such an obviously social constructivist position. It is to Conklin’s credit that she has been able to recreate this fluidity so faithfully; through her meticulous archival work, she reveals individuals who were both visionaries and dependant on the academic status quo. It is in navigating this tension that the book succeeds handsomely. Conklin is an astute reader of sources and she has deftly brought together a sometimes bewildering cast of characters into a unified story about the networks, constraints and acquaintances that defined the production of knowledge in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century France. It is perhaps a shame that she does not occasionally venture more into the realm of ideas, especially because of the theoretical implications of her subject matter. One would have wanted a clearer sense of how Mauss and Rivet’s ideas developed, even if this is something that has been discussed elsewhere. Likewise, it would have been nice to see how this case study fits into larger topics in global history such as the emergence of human rights, concepts of global governance, or ideas of French republican empire-building that were the subject of Conklin’s first book. Hopefully, there will be space to consider some of these issues in future publications. For now, however, we will have to make do with an illuminating and penetrating monograph that deserves a readership well beyond the restricted world of French historians.