Godlier has tried to construct the history of the scope of anthropology. Before the emergence of anthropology, history was a dominant discipline in social sciences, and it revolved round the study of production relations.
But, with the extension of the net of imperialism and colonialism, history failed to provide any reliable data on the societies which were non-western and characterized by illiteracy and backwardness.
For instance, when the Britishers came to India, naturally, they were interested to know the vast masses of the Indian people. There was an Indian history but they did not have any first-hand account of the village people and the illiterate masses. The colonial domination in Africa and Australia also faced such problems.
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This obliged history to give up its scope to ethnology or rural sociology. In some cases, as in Britain, ancient and modern history gave place to social anthropology and ethnology.
Thus, anthropology took to the study of regional or local societies through direct observation and visible enquires. When Hutton wrote about the caste system in India, he generated data through verbal enquiries. So was done by Evans- Pritchard in the study of Nuer, and Malinowski of Argonouts or
Trobriand. In the beginning, when anthropology parted company with history, it studied historically known western societies through the method of observation and verbal enquiries. Godlier observes:
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At the same time, and for the same reasons, entire sections of western history, ancient and modern, were abandbned to ethnology or rural sociology… Anthropology was handed over the study of all aspects of regional or rural life which appeared to be survival of pre-capitalist and pre-industrialist modes of production and social organization or which had very old ethnic and cultural characteristics.
In France, and also the rest of Europe, anthropology was considered not necessarily to be a study of primitive people only. It focused on all groups which did not have written documents and which were cast aside by historians.
It is because of this that Hutton and Risley paid little attention to tribes and greater attention to castes. The study of caste was beneficial for the strengthening of British regime. The objective of the study of non-western, pre-capitalist and pre-industrialist man was two-fold: (i) colonial exploitation, and (ii) extension of market.