Statue protests reach Sweden: title list against Linné

During the protests following George Floyd's death in the US, several statues depicting, among other things, former slave owners were overturned and sabotaged in protest. In the UK, activists have overturned a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, and even in Sweden, votes are now being raised that statues should be removed. For example, a naming list has been started which requires that statues of Carl von Linné be removed.

The reason is that Linnaeus' research "helped white Europeans realize that they were the superior race and used as the basis and explanation for dehumanizing black and brown, colonizing, looting", according to the list of names.

- That's because he classified man, and how he wrote about blacks, says Gunnar Broberg, who is professor emeritus in history of ideas and learning at Lund University. Broberg has written the biography The Man Who Organized Nature, about Linnaeus.

According to Gunnar Broberg, Carl von Linné does not use the concept of races, but he believed in different kinds of people. He ranked them, and put the African peoples at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Race biology as a concept did not exist in Linnaeus' time, but his research had a great impact by classifying all life, although he himself did not do shell studies or the like.

- He is based on classical antique temperamental theory, captured by statements that contemporary make of variations in man. He expresses the prejudices of his time, from the Bible onwards, where the blacks are cursed by the fall.

But can you say that he was a racist?

- Possibly, but he did not pay any particular attention to the issue of African people. Some of his students who traveled extensively were clear advocates of slavery, it was not Linnaeus.