Medieval Pasts and Eugenicist Futures: Grant Allen, Masculinity and Early English History

Grant Allen was a Victorian scholar and novelist who published widely on science, literature and history. Embedded within these publications is a fascination with early England, particularly early English masculinity. Allen saw in England's origins a blueprint for the kind of white, hegemonic masculinity he wished to see reproduced not only in contemporary English society and culture but also in the eugenic makeup of the English people as well. By reaching to early English history to legitimise his own visions of imperial white masculinity, Allen weaves a fantasy of medieval male virility into the fabric of his Victorian present. This essay discusses Allen's interest in the social apparatus of gender, contemporary eugenicist discourse and the interpretive potential of an imagined medieval past and argues that Allen uses early English history to justify ongoing colonial projects and to frame white men as the rightful heirs to global power.