How did European ethnocentrism affect early anthropology?

European ethnocentrism profoundly shaped early anthropology by establishing a Western-centric framework that viewed non-Western societies through the lens of European values and history.12

In the 19th century, this bias manifested primarily as unilinear evolutionism. Anthropologists such as Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan assumed that all human societies progressed through a fixed, universal sequence—typically categorized as "savagery," "barbarism," and "civilization". Within this model, industrial Western nations were positioned as the pinnacle of human achievement, while indigenous, preliterate societies were dismissed as "primitive" or "fossilized" remnants of humanity's past.1345

This ethnocentric perspective had several significant consequences:
* Justification of Colonialism: Labeling indigenous groups as "savage" or "barbarous" provided a moral veneer for colonial expansion and assimilation policies, framing them as efforts to "civilize" these populations.5
* Biased Interpretation: Researchers often misinterpreted non-Western beliefs and social structures as "illogical," "prelogical," or lacking in religion simply because they did not mirror Western rationalism.2
* Data Collection: Early ethnography was frequently conducted by colonial officials or missionaries to facilitate political and social control over indigenous regions.5