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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN VICTIMS
AND VICTIMOLOGY
Series Editors:
Matthew Hall and Pamela Davies

THE CRIMINAL
VICTIMIZATION
OF IMMIGRANTS

William F. McDonald
Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology

Series Editors
Matthew Hall
University of Lincoln
Lincoln, UK

Pamela Davies
Department of Social Sciences
Northumbria University
Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
In recent decades, a growing emphasis on meeting the needs and rights of
victims of crime in criminal justice policy and practice has fuelled the
development of research, theory, policy and practice outcomes stretching
across the globe. This growth of interest in the victim of crime has seen
victimology move from being a distinct subset of criminology in academia
to a specialist area of study and research in its own right. Palgrave Studies
in Victims and Victimology showcases the work of contemporary scholars
of victimological research and publishes some of the highest-quality
research in the field. The series reflects the range and depth of research
and scholarship in this burgeoning area, combining contributions from
both established scholars who have helped to shape the field and more
recent entrants. It also reflects both the global nature of many of the issues
surrounding justice for victims of crime and social harm and the interna-
tional span of scholarship researching and writing about them. Editorial
Board:- Antony Pemberton, Tilburg University, Netherlands; Jo-Anne
Wemmers, Montreal University, Canada; Joanna Shapland, Sheffield
University, UK; Jonathan Doak, Durham University, UK.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14571
 William F. McDonald

The Criminal
Victimization
of Immigrants
William F. McDonald
Department of Sociology
Georgetown University
Washington, DC, USA

Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology

ISBN 978-3-319-69061-2    ISBN 978-3-319-69062-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69062-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017963545

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Détail de la Tour Eiffel © nemesis2207/Fotolia.co.uk

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 To Irene,
for her love and support
 Acknowledgments

This book began as one chapter in a larger book about immigration and
crime. That larger book continues to be written. It is not limited to the
criminal victimization of immigrants. Rather, it includes all the research
that I have done over several years in connection with this topic. That
research began with grant 95-IJ-CX-0110 from the National Institute of
Justice, US Department of Justice to Georgetown University, and has
been supported by sabbatical funding. I want to express my sincere grati-
tude for the support, cooperation, and assistance I received from the
National Institute of Justice, Georgetown University, Carole Sargent,
Director of the Office of Scholarly Publications, Georgetown University,
and the many people who gave me the benefit of their time and experience
in the long course of this research. The views and opinions expressed
herein are mine and do not necessarily represent those of the US
Department of Justice, Georgetown University, or any of the people or
organizations I have acknowledged.

vii
 Contents

1 The Immigrant as Victim: The Minimal Research1

2 Theories of Criminal Victimization11

3 The Criminal Victimization of Immigrants: A Meta Survey29

4 Exploiting Immigrant Vulnerability47

5 Anti-Immigrant Hate Crime55

6 Domestic Violence/Intimate Partner Violence/Wife

Battering75

7 The Global Prohibition Regime Against Trafficking

in Persons: Understanding the Limited Results85

8 Conclusions105

References109

Index127

ix
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Crude death rates per 100,000 population per year for
homicide by race, birthplace, sex, and age: New York City,
1988–199232
Table 3.2 Race and ethnicity of killers and victims: New York City,
1750–187433
Table 3.3 Risk of victimization relative to Italians by foreign status and
type of crime: Italy, 1999 [Italians = 1] 34
Table 3.4 Immigrant status of victim and offender by type of crime:
Italy, 1999 35
Table 3.5 Ethnicity and Mariel status of homicide victims by ethnicity of
offenders: Miami, 1980–1990 37
Table 3.6 Differential ethnic risk of victimization by ethnic group 41

xi
 CHAPTER 1

The Immigrant as Victim:

The Minimal Research

Abstract Despite the common observation that immigrants are ­frequently

victims of crimes, research on the topic has been limited in part due to the
lack of good data and in part because claims makers have constructed the
problem in other, more socially and politically compelling terms: “modern
slaves;” trafficking victims; domestic violence; hate crime; child abuse and
elder abuse. Another aspect of the problem is that the concept “­immigrant”
over-aggregates, lumping into one category people with widely differing
characteristics. Victimologists have approached the subject from distinct
traditions: the humanistic/human rights vs. the positivist or “conservative.”

Keywords Social construction • Over-aggregate • Humanism • Positivism

• Claims makers • Hans von Hentig

Criminological research on immigrants has been primarily concerned with

the criminality of immigrants. Less concern has been paid to immigrants as
victims of crime In his review of the literature, for instance, Satyanshu
Mukherjee of the Australian Institute of Criminology concluded that “apart
from hate crime, there has been little concern in criminal victimization of
immigrants.”1 This comes as no surprise given that in 1967 the President’s
Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice declared
that “one of the most neglected subjects in the study of crime is its victims.”2

© The Author(s) 2018 1

W.F. McDonald, The Criminal Victimization
of Immigrants, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69062-9_1
2 W.F. MCDONALD

Although the pioneer victimologist Hans von Hentig, himself an

­immigrant, devoted substantial attention to the depredations inflicted
upon immigrants by criminal and unscrupulous predators,3 until recently
victimologists have not pursued that topic.4 Virtually nothing more was
done until the Fifth International Symposium on Victimology in 1985.
Even then there was not much about immigrant victims.5
The lack of interest in the topic is surprising given what was known
about immigrants and foreigners. For example, von Hentig observed that
“[t]here is a tendency all over the world to make the foreigner bear blame
for others. Their different appearance, their poverty, the life in the slums,
all render them suspect.”6 And Stephan Schafer, another early victimolo-
gist, explained that immigrants are like “ethnic minorities, and others who
are in a socially weak position [and so] are often exploited by the criminal
element.”7 By the time Biko Agozino of the School of Science, Liverpool,
began writing about the subject, the immigrant was seen in a more
­complex way. He wrote,

[T]he immigrant is not the typical criminal but the typical criminalised
­person, not the typical example of the individual offender being punished
but the model of the innocent being victimized as a member of a demonised
category.8

These days stories about the criminal victimization of immigrants are

daily fare in the media. A Maryland legislator tells the press, “[i]t bothers
me to see how our (immigrant) community is victimized by so many
fraudulent scams.”9 Similarly, a former German police officer says, “You
don’t find foreigners on the streets in eastern Germany past 6 or 8 p.m.
In the villages, it’s difficult for the police because often their own sons
are involved in the violence… And the rightists have some sympathizers
among the police. I’ve heard police say, ‘All foreigners are criminals, and
the young people help us keep the countryside clean.’”10
An article from a New York City paper reports that “assaults in which
perpetrators are people of color have become more common—and victims
tend to be immigrants from every imaginable origin. The change is a m ­ atter
of sheer demographics.”11 An article from the Head of the Forced Migration
Studies Program at Witswatersrand University, South Africa reads:
“Xenophobia is turning immigrants into ‘mobile ATMs’ for police and
criminals who see them as a source of instant cash.”12 A news service story
about illegal immigrants traveling from Central America through Mexico
 THE IMMIGRANT AS VICTIM: THE MINIMAL RESEARCH 3

to the USA describes the trip as like the running of a brutal gauntlet in
which everyone—good, bad, or indifferent—takes the opportunity to vic-
timize the immigrants.

The journey is extremely dangerous. The stories these seven men tell
­highlight the perils faced by the hundreds of Guatemalans, Hondurans,
Salvadorans and others who begin the trip every day. The men in the shanty
say that since they entered Mexico at the southern state of Chiapas a few
days earlier, they have seen or experienced just about everything: Some have
been beaten, forced to pay bribes, robbed by law enforcement officers,
ripped off by shopkeepers and bus drivers, cheated by smugglers, ambushed
and mugged by gun-toting bandits.13

Nowhere is free from the abuse of immigrants, even in a nation of immi-

grants. In 1957, for example, the Australian Commonwealth Immigration
Advisory Council wrote the following:

A not unimportant matter that was mentioned by a number of Police

Officers in each of the States was that, whilst undue publicity was given to
the offenses alleged to have been committed by migrants, little or nothing
was said of the many instances when European migrants had been assaulted
or robbed or otherwise ill-treated by the undesirable sections of our own
native-born populations.14

The minimal research on the victimization of immigrants is u ­ ndoubtedly

related in part to the difficulty of obtaining valid data on the immigration
status of crime victims. Information about crimes against immigrants is
mostly anecdotal coming from media reports or the experiences of immi-
grant service providers. There are virtually no official crime statistics on
this matter of the criminal victimization of immigrants in the USA15 or
Australia.16 Such data are available in several European countries. However,
their validity and reliability are open to question.17
Another reason for the lack of a focus on immigrants qua immigrants
as victims is what researchers working within the social constructionist
­tradition would describe as the process of defining victim categories and
of “making claims”18 on behalf of those categories. Victim-activists have
been remarkably successful at placing a variety of victim categories and
victim issues on the public agenda, including elder abuse,19 hate crime,20
child abuse,21 domestic abuse,22 and crime against the elderly.23 The fact
that they have not cast “immigrants” in the role of “star victim”24 does
not necessarily mean that concern about immigrant victimization does
not exist at all. Rather, it is because certain immigrant troubles have
4 W.F. MCDONALD

been ­ subsumed under politically hotter topics, such as hate crime,

domestic violence and human trafficking.25
Indeed, one of the most successful claims-making campaigns on behalf
of victims of crime ever mounted is about an “immigration” issue.
However, it has been packaged under the far more politically potent rubric
of “the trafficking of human beings.” The star role in this campaign has
been a classic example of what Nils Christie called the “ideal victim,” i.e.,
“a person or category of individuals who—when hit by crime—most
­readily are given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim.”26
Like Hiram Powers’ famous sculpture, The Greek Slave,27 the image of the
innocent girl abducted to a foreign land and forced into sexual slavery by
depraved and lustful men became a household icon, the image of the
innocent girl being trafficked off to a foreign land to be debauched has
been used to successfully galvanize support for the anti-trafficking cause.28
Related to this second reason for the lack of research on immigrants as
victims of crime is the fact that the concept “immigrant” over-aggregates
matters. Unlike traditional demographic variables such as gender, age,
race/ethnicity, social class, and urban vs. rural residence, the status of
being an immigrant does not represent a singular dimension of social
­status or experience. Any review of what is known about the victimization
of immigrants by necessity must expect to find the literature subdivided
into more specialized categories such as hate crime, domestic violence and
trafficking of humans.
It must also be recognized that since the 1960s much research related
to immigrants no longer focuses upon immigrant status as it did in the
early twentieth century in the United States. These days the terms, race,
ethnicity, and immigrant are used virtually interchangeably. Thus, in
Europe and Australia official data on hate crime and crime victimization
surveys that ask about race and ethnic information are presumed to be
proxy measures for crimes against immigrants—even though the victims
may be second or third generation. It also bears mentioning that since
the war in Yugoslavia and the collapse of Soviet communism, the term
“­immigrant” (especially in Europe) is often used synonymously with that
of refugee or asylum seeker.
When victimologists/criminologists have focused on immigrants as
­victims of crime, they have sometimes followed the humanistic/human
rights (as opposed to the positivist or so-called “conservative”) tradition
in ­victimology.29 They have not limited their analyses solely to victimiza-
tions involving crimes in the technical, legal sense.30 Rather they define
 THE IMMIGRANT AS VICTIM: THE MINIMAL RESEARCH 5

“victimization” broadly to include civil matters, such as unfair business or

labor practices31; discriminatory behavior by the police and the criminal
justice system32; discriminatory labor standards and laws that put
farm workers and illegal immigrants at high risk of physical injuries or
loss of wages33; harsh and stingy asylum and refugee policies34; and “the
criminalization of immigration controls.”35
It should be noted that the American lack of research on immigrants as
victims of crime is unlikely to be reversed by the Donald Trump adminis-
tration. Actually at his first address to Congress, President Trump prom-
ised to have immigrants studied as the cause of crime.36 In addition to
describing the development of victimology and its ­reasons for not focus-
ing much on immigrants, this chapter describes the endless types of crimes
and injuries which immigrants suffer. It also reviews theories of victimiza-
tion at both the macro and micro levels, showing that they fit the patterns
in the data rather well. However, it also highlights an inconsistency
between the macro-level explanation which emphases h ­ eterogeneity (eth-
nic differences among groups as a cause of conflict) and the micro-level
explanations that stress homogeneity (the lifestyles shared in common
and the fact that immigrants are usually ­victimized by their own kind).
These two perspectives and the data behind them seem to both support
and challenge at the same time the popular idea that ethnic enclaves ­protect
immigrants from victimization. Yes, enclaves do seem to protect immigrants
from victimization by outsiders but not by insiders. That is, enclaves reduce
heterogeneity within them and thereby reduce the chance of so-called “hate
crime” (victimization motivated by differences in ­culture, religion, national-
ity, ethnicity). But enclaves also increase homogeneity which means that
immigrants are living together with other immigrants and co-ethnics. That
situation increases the risk of being v­ ictimized by fellow immigrants and co-
ethnics, which is precisely what the data show happening and what the
opportunity theories predict. This conclusion is supported below.

Notes
1. Mukherjee (1999).
2. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of
Justice (1967: 38).
3. Von Hentig (1945).
4. None of the following major books on victims of crime address “immi-
grants” as victims—although some do address racial minorities (Karmen
1990; Fattah 1991; Elias 1993; Sgarzi and McDevitt 2003; Kennedy and
Sacco 1998; Shichor and Tibbetts 2002; Goodey 2005). But see Coston
6 W.F. MCDONALD

(2004). The problems of immigrants as victims have been featured in

various numbers of the International Review of Victimology.
5. Of the 43 presenters only three addressed the victimization of “the foreign
born and minorities.” In summarizing those presentations the rapporteurs
wrote: “Alien persons in a society often suffer extraordinary degrees of
victimization” (Geis et al. 1988: 199). The evidence presented amounted
to nothing more than examples of misunderstanding and mistreatment of
minorities; labor market exploitation; and the failure to translate legal con-
cepts into the languages familiar to certain minorities.
6. Von Hentig (1948: 414).
7. Schafer (1981: 23).
8. Agozino (1996: 103).
9. Williams (2005).
10. Moseley (1998).
11. City Limits (2004).
12. Templeton and Maphumulo (2005).
13. Graglia (2006).
14. Quoted in Mukherjee (1999: 23).
15. Hagan and Palloni (1998: 382). One important exception is homicide data
for immigrants available from death certificates (Sorenson and Shen 1996).
16. Mukherjee (1999).
17. A survey of the Member States of the European Union asked whether
when registering racist crimes the police recorded the ethnicity and/or
nationality (citizenship) of victims and/or offenders. Twenty-two coun-
tries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia,
Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and
Sweden) indicated that “nationality” was recorded. In some cases, this was
only for the victim, in others only for the offender. In most cases it seems
that “nationality” meant “citizenship status.” In a few countries the clas-
sification actually used was simply “citizen” or “foreigner” (Oakley 2005:
19). See also, for Germany (Albrecht 1987, 1997); Italy (Barbagli 1998;
Barbagli and Colombo 2009); Netherlands (Junger-Tas 1994); Sweden
(Martens 1997); and Switzerland (Killias 1997: 21).
18. Spector and Kitsuse (1977).
19. Baumann (1989).
20. Czajkoski (1992).
21. Best (1987).
22. Loseke (1991).
23. Cooke and Skogan (1990).
24. Elias (1993).
25. See, e.g., Abraham (2000), Raj et al. (2002).
 THE IMMIGRANT AS VICTIM: THE MINIMAL RESEARCH 7

26. Christie (1986: 18). For example, the ideal victim would be weak (sick,
old, very young); carrying out a respectable activity where she could not be
blamed for being (e.g., in a public sidewalk in daylight); and the offender
is big, bad, and in no personal relationship to the victim.
27. Powers (1844).
28. McDonald (2004).
29. Mawby and Walklate (1994).
30. Victimology has a long tradition of defining the scope of its field well
beyond violations of criminal law (Geis et al. 1988; Mendelsohn 1963;
Fattah 1991). Cressey notes that this renders the field unmanageable and
unscientific, albeit responsive to humanitarian and justice concerns (Cressey
1988).
31. Claghorn (1917).
32. Holdaway (2003), Mukherjee (1999: 112). Von Hentig would agree with
Holdaway and Mukherjee that immigrants who have been the object of
police prejudice are properly thought of as “victims.” He wrote: “One is
not allowed to speak of delinquents as ‘victims’ of criminal justice, with
one exception. If the treatment of many law-enforcing agencies is grossly
discriminatory, concept and term are justified” (von Hentig 1948: 417).
33. Jenks and Jenks (2004).
34. Jupp (2003).
35. Palidda (1996), Agozino (1996).
36. Hagen, Lisa. 2017. Democrats Groan as Trump Promotes New Immigration
Crime Office. The Hill, February 28. http://thehill.com/homenews/
administration/321717-democrats-groan-as-trump-promotes-new-immi-
gration-crime-office. Accessed 6 Apr 2017.

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 CHAPTER 2

Theories of Criminal Victimization

Abstract There are two kinds of theories of criminal victimization:

­individual (micro) and aggregate/structural (macro) correlates. Victimologists
have focused upon the characteristics of victims and victim-precipitated
crime. Findings that young, unmarried males had higher rates of victim-
ization than their demographic counterparts led to theories about
­lifestyles/routine activities. The association between social structures and
aggregate victimization rates supported the theory of collective efficacy
and clarified the social disorganization theory advanced by Shaw and
McKay. Opportunity theory and Blau’s theory of heterogeneity help
explain the effects of heterogeneity and residential segregation.

Keywords Heterogeneity • Victim-precipitated crime • Micro • Macro

• Theory • Opportunity • Lifestyles • Routine activities • Collective
efficacy • Social disorganization

Micro and Macro Approaches

Victimology—the systematic study of victims—began in the 1940s with
the work of Hans von Hentig1 and Benjamin Mendelsohn2; got a major
boost in the 1960s from the development of criminal victimization sur-
veys3; and has been a dynamic source of theorizing, research, and policy

© The Author(s) 2018 11

W.F. McDonald, The Criminal Victimization
of Immigrants, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69062-9_2
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
this inequality arose from the circumstance that two of Saturn’s years
are very nearly equal to five of Jupiter’s.

The problems relating to Jupiter’s Satellites, were found to be

even more complex than those which refer to the planets: for it was
necessary to consider each satellite as disturbed by the other three
at once; and thus there occurred the Problem of Five Bodies. This
problem was resolved by Lagrange. 50
50 Bailly, Ast. Mod. iii. 178.

Again, the newly-discovered small Planets, Juno, Ceres, Vesta,

Pallas, whose orbits almost coincide with each other, and are more
inclined and more eccentric than those of the ancient planets, give
rise, by their perturbations, to new forms of the problem, and require
new artifices.

In the course of these researches respecting Jupiter, Lagrange

and Laplace were led to consider particularly the secular Inequalities
of the solar system; that is, those inequalities in which the duration of
the cycle of change embraces very many revolutions of the bodies
themselves. Euler in 1749 and 1755, and Lagrange 51 in 1766, had
introduced the method of the Variation of the Elements of the orbit;
which consists in tracing the effect of the perturbing forces, not as
directly altering the place of the planet, but as producing a change
from one instant to another, in the dimensions and position of the
Elliptical orbit which the planet describes. 52 Taking this view, he 371
determines the secular changes of each of the elements or
determining quantities of the orbit. In 1773, Laplace also attacked
this subject of secular changes, and obtained expressions for them.
On this occasion, he proved the celebrated proposition that, “the
mean motions of the planets are invariable:” that is, that there is, in
the revolutions of the system, no progressive change which is not
finally stopped and reversed; no increase, which is not, after some
period, changed into decrease; no retardation which is not at last
succeeded by acceleration; although, in some cases, millions of
years may elapse before the system reaches the turning-point.
Thomas Simpson noticed the same consequence of the laws of
universal attraction. In 1774 and 1776, Lagrange 53 still labored at
the secular equations; extending his researches to the nodes and
inclinations; and showed that the invariability of the mean motions of
the planets, which Laplace had proved, neglecting the fourth powers
of the eccentricities and inclinations of the orbits, 54 was true,
however far the approximation was carried, so long as the squares
of the disturbing masses were neglected. He afterwards improved
his methods; 55 and, in 1783, he endeavored to extend the
calculation of the changes of the elements to the periodical
equations, as well as the secular.
51 Gautier, Prob. de Trois Corps, p. 155.

52 In the first edition of this History, I had ascribed to Lagrange

the invention of the Method of Variation of Elements in the theory
of Perturbations. But justice to Euler requires that we should
assign this distinction to him; at least, next to Newton, whose
mode of representing the paths of bodies by means of a
Revolving Orbit, in the Ninth Section of the Principia, may be
considered as an anticipation of the method of variation of
elements. In the fifth volume of the Mécanique Céleste, livre xv. p.
305, is an abstract of Euler’s paper of 1749; where Laplace adds,
“C’est le premier essai de la méthode de la variation des
constantes arbitraires.” And in page 310 is an abstract of the
paper of 1756: and speaking of the method, Laplace says, “It
consists in regarding the elements of the elliptical motion as
variable in virtue of the perturbing forces. Those elements are, 1,
the axis major; 2, the epoch of the body being at the apse; 3, the
 eccentricity; 4, the movement of the apse; 5, the inclination; 6, the
longitude of the node;” and he then proceeds to show how Euler
did this. It is possible that Lagrange knew nothing of Euler’s
paper. See Méc. Cél. vol. v. p. 312. But Euler’s conception and
treatment of the method are complete, so that he must be looked
upon as the author of it.

53 Gautier, p. 104.

54 Ib. p. 184.

55 Ib. p. 196.

8. Mécanique Céleste, &c.—Laplace also resumed the

consideration of the secular changes; and, finally, undertook his vast
work, the Mécanique Céleste, which he intended to contain a
complete view of the existing state of this splendid department of
science. We may see, in the exultation which the author obviously
feels at the thought of erecting this monument of his age, the
enthusiasm which had been excited by the splendid course of
mathematical successes of which I have given a sketch. The two first
volumes of this great work appeared in 1799. The third and fourth
volumes were published in 1802 and 1805 respectively. Since its
publication, little has been added to the solution of the great
problems of which it treats. In 1808, Laplace presented to the French
Bureau des Longitudes, a Supplement to the Mécanique Céleste;
the object of which was to improve still further 372 the mode of
obtaining the secular variations of the elements. Poisson and
Lagrange proved the invariability of the major axes of the orbits, as
far as the second order of the perturbing forces. Various other
authors have since labored at this subject. Burckhardt, in 1808,
extended the perturbing function as far as the sixth order of the
eccentricities. Gauss, Hansen, and Bessel, Ivory, MM. Lubbock,
Plana, Pontécoulant, and Airy, have, at different periods up to the
present time, either extended or illustrated some particular part of
the theory, or applied it to special cases; as in the instance of
Professor Airy’s calculation of an inequality of Venus and the earth,
of which the period is 240 years. The approximation of the Moon’s
motions has been pushed to an almost incredible extent by M.
Damoiseau, and, finally, Plana has once more attempted to present,
in a single work (three thick quarto volumes), all that has hitherto
been executed with regard to the theory of the Moon.

I give only the leading points of the progress of analytical

dynamics. Hence I have not spoken in detail of the theory of the
Satellites of Jupiter, a subject on which Lagrange gained a prize for a
Memoir, in 1766, and in which Laplace discovered some most
curious properties in 1784. Still less have I referred to the purely
speculative question of Tautochronous Curves in a resisting medium,
though it was a subject of the labors of Bernoulli, Euler, Fontaine,
D’Alembert, Lagrange, and Laplace. The reader will rightly suppose
that many other curious investigations are passed over in utter
silence.

[2d Ed.] [Although the analytical calculations of the great

mathematicians of the last century had determined, in a
demonstrative manner, a vast series of inequalities to which the
motions of the sun, moon, and planets were subject in virtue of their
mutual attraction, there were still unsatisfactory points in the
solutions thus given of the great mechanical problems suggested by
the System of the Universe. One of these points was the want of any
evident mechanical significance in the successive members of these
series. Lindenau relates that Lagrange, near the end of his life,
expressed his sorrow that the methods of approximation employed in
Physical Astronomy rested on arbitrary processes, and not on any
insight into the results of mechanical action. But something was
subsequently done to remove the ground of this complaint. In 1818,
Gauss pointed out that secular equations may be conceived to result
from the disturbing body being distributed along its orbit so as to
form a ring, and thus made the result conceivable more distinctly
than as a mere result of calculation. And it appears 373 to me that
Professor Airy’s treatise entitled Gravitation, published at Cambridge
in 1834, is of great value in supplying similar modes of conception
with regard to the mechanical origin of many of the principal
inequalities of the solar system.

Bessel in 1824, and Hansen in 1828, published works which are

considered as belonging, along with those of Gauss, to a new era in
physical astronomy. 56 Gauss’s Theoria Motuum Corporum
Celestium, which had Lalande’s medal assigned to it by the French
Institute, had already (1810) resolved all problems concerning the
determination of the place of a planet or comet in its orbit in function
of the elements. The value of Hansen’s labors respecting the
Perturbations of the Planets was recognized by the Astronomical
Society of London, which awarded to them its gold medal.
56 Abhand. der Akad. d. Wissensch. zu Berlin. 1824; and
Disquisitiones circa Theoriam Perturbationum. See Jahn. Gesch.
der Astron. p. 84.

The investigations of M. Damoiseau, and of MM. Plana and

Carlini, on the Problem of the Lunar Theory, followed nearly the
same course as those of their predecessors. In these, as in the
Mécanique Céleste and in preceding works on the same subject, the
Moon’s co-ordinates (time, radius vector, and latitude) were
expressed in function of her true longitude. The integrations were
effected in series, and then by reversion of the series, the longitude
was expressed in function of the time; and then in the same manner
the other two co-ordinates. But Sir John Lubbock and M.
Pontécoulant have made the mean longitude of the moon, that is,
the time, the independent variable, and have expressed the moon’s
co-ordinates in terms of sines and cosines of angles increasing
proportionally to the time. And this method has been adopted by M.
Poisson (Mem. Inst. xiii. 1835, p. 212). M. Damoiseau, like Laplace
and Clairaut, had deduced the successive coefficients of the lunar
inequalities by numerical equations. But M. Plana expresses
explicitly each coefficient in general terms of the letters expressing
the constants of the problem, arranging them according to the order
of the quantities, and substituting numbers at the end of the
operation only. By attending to this arrangement, MM. Lubbock and
Pontécoulant have verified or corrected a large portion of the terms
contained in the investigations of MM. Damoiseau and Plana. Sir
John Lubbock has calculated the polar co-ordinates of the Moon
directly; M. Poisson, on the other hand, has obtained the variable
elliptical elements; M. Pontécoulant conceives that the method of
variation or arbitrary 374 constants may most conveniently be
reserved for secular inequalities and inequalities of long periods.

MM. Lubbock and Pontécoulant have made the mode of treating

the Lunar Theory and the Planetary Theory agree with each other,
instead of following two different paths in the calculation of the two
problems, which had previously been done.

Prof. Hansen, also, in his Fundamenta Nova Investigationis

Orbitæ veræ quam Luna perlustrat (Gothæ, 1838), gives a general
method, including the Lunar Theory and the Planetary Theory as two
special cases. To this is annexed a solution of the Problem of Four
Bodies.

I am here speaking of the Lunar and Planetary Theories as

Mechanical Problems only. Connected with this subject, I will not
omit to notice a very general and beautiful method of solving
problems respecting the motion of systems of mutually attracting
bodies, given by Sir W. R. Hamilton, in the Philosophical
Transactions for 1834–5 (“On a General Method in Dynamics”). His
method consists in investigating the Principal Function of the co-
ordinates of the bodies: this function being one, by the differentiation
of which, the co-ordinates of the bodies of the system may be found.
Moreover, an approximate value of this function being obtained, the
same formulæ supply a means of successive approximation without
limit.]

9. Precession. Motion of Rigid Bodies.—The series of

investigations of which I have spoken, extensive and complex as it
is, treats the moving bodies as points only, and takes no account of
any peculiarity of their form or motion of their parts. The investigation
of the motion of a body of any magnitude and form, is another
branch of analytical mechanics, which well deserves notice. Like the
former branch, it mainly owed its cultivation to the problems
suggested by the solar system. Newton, as we have seen,
endeavored to calculate the effect of the attraction of the sun and
moon in producing the precession of the equinoxes; but in doing this
he made some mistakes. In 1747, D’Alembert solved this problem by
the aid of his “Principle;” and it was not difficult for him to show, as
he did in his Opuscules, in 1761, that the same method enabled him
to determine the motion of a body of any figure acted upon by any
forces. But, as the reader will have observed in the course of this
narrative, the great mathematicians of this period were always nearly
abreast of each other in their advances.—Euler, 57 in the mean time,
had published, in 1751, a solution of the 375 problem of the
precession; and in 1752, a memoir which he entitled Discovery of a
New Principle of Mechanics, and which contains a solution of the
general problem of the alteration of rotary motion by forces.
D’Alembert noticed with disapprobation the assumption of priority
which this title implied, though allowing the merit of the memoir.
Various improvements were made in these solutions; but the final
form was given them by Euler; and they were applied to a great
variety of problems in his Theory of the Motion of Solid and Rigid
Bodies, which was written 58 about 1760, and published in 1765. The
formulæ in this work were much simplified by the use of a discovery
of Segner, that every body has three axes which were called
Principal Axes, about which alone (in general) it would permanently
revolve. The equations which Euler and other writers had obtained,
were attacked as erroneous by Landen in the Philosophical
Transactions for 1785; but I think it is impossible to consider this
criticism otherwise than as an example of the inability of the English
mathematicians of that period to take a steady hold of the analytical
generalizations to which the great Continental authors had been led.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable calculations of the motion of a
rigid body is that which Lagrange performed with regard to the
Moon’s Libration; and by which he showed that the Nodes of the
Moon’s Equator and those of her Orbit must always coincide.
57 Ac. Berl. 1745, 1750.

58 See the preface to the book.

10. Vibrating Strings.—Other mechanical questions, unconnected

with astronomy, were also pursued with great zeal and success.
Among these was the problem of a vibrating string, stretched
between two fixed points. There is not much complexity in the
mechanical conceptions which belong to this case, but considerable
difficulty in reducing them to analysis. Taylor, in his Method of
Increments, published in 1716, had annexed to his work a solution of
this problem; obtained on suppositions, limited indeed, but
apparently conformable to the most common circumstances of
practice. John Bernoulli, in 1728, had also treated the same problem.
But it assumed an interest altogether new, when, in 1747,
D’Alembert published his views on the subject; in which he
maintained that, instead of one kind of curve only, there were an
infinite number of different curves, which answered the conditions of
the question. The problem, thus put forward by one great
mathematician, was, as usual, taken up by the others, whose names
the reader is now so familiar with in such an association. In 376 1748,
Euler not only assented to the generalization of D’Alembert, but held
that it was not necessary that the curves so introduced should be
defined by any algebraical condition whatever. From this extreme
indeterminateness D’Alembert dissented; while Daniel Bernoulli,
trusting more to physical and less to analytical reasonings,
maintained that both these generalizations were inapplicable in fact,
and that the solution was really restricted, as had at first been
supposed, to the form of the trochoid, and to other forms derivable
from that. He introduced, in such problems, the “Law of Coexistent
Vibrations,” which is of eminent use in enabling us to conceive the
results of complex mechanical conditions, and the real import of
many analytical expressions. In the mean time, the wonderful
analytical genius of Lagrange had applied itself to this problem. He
had formed the Academy of Turin, in conjunction with his friends
Saluces and Cigna; and the first memoir in their Transactions was
one by him on this subject: in this and in subsequent writings he has
established, to the satisfaction of the mathematical world, that the
functions introduced in such cases are not necessarily continuous,
but are arbitrary to the same degree that the motion is so practically;
though capable of expression by a series of circular functions. This
controversy, concerning the degree of lawlessness with which the
conditions of the solution may be assumed, is of consequence, not
only with respect to vibrating strings, but also with respect to many
problems, belonging to a branch of Mechanics which we now have to
mention, the Doctrine of Fluids.

11. Equilibrium of Fluids. Figure of the Earth. Tides.—The

application of the general doctrines of Mechanics to fluids was a
natural and inevitable step, when the principles of the science had
been generalized. It was easily seen that a fluid is, for this purpose,
nothing more than a body of which the parts are movable amongst
each other with entire facility; and that the mathematician must trace
the consequences of this condition upon his equations. This
accordingly was done, by the founders of mechanics, both for the
cases of the equilibrium and of motion. Newton’s attempt to solve the
problem of the figure of the earth, supposing it fluid, is the first
example of such an investigation: and this solution rested upon
principles which we have already explained, applied with the skill
and sagacity which distinguished all that Newton did.

We have already seen how the generality of the principle, that

fluids press equally in all directions, was established. In applying it to
calculation, Newton took for his fundamental principle, the equal 377
weight of columns of the fluid reaching to the centre; Huyghens took,
as his basis, the perpendicularity of the resulting force at each point
to the surface of the fluid; Bouguer conceived that both principles
were necessary; and Clairaut showed that the equilibrium of all
canals is requisite. He also was the first mathematician who deduced
from this principle the Equations of Partial Differentials by which
these laws are expressed; a step which, as Lagrange says, 59
changed the face of Hydrostatics, and made it a new science. Euler
simplified the mode of obtaining the Equations of Equilibrium for any
forces whatever; and put them in the form which is now generally
adopted in our treatises.
59 Méc. Analyt. ii. p. 180.

The explanation of the Tides, in the way in which Newton

attempted it in the third book of the Principia, is another example of a
hydrostatical investigation: for he considered only the form that the
ocean would have if it were at rest. The memoirs of Maclaurin,
Daniel Bernoulli, and Euler, on the question of the Tides, which
shared among them the prize of the Academy of Sciences in 1740,
went upon the same views.

The Treatise of the Figure of the Earth, by Clairaut, in 1743,

extended Newton’s solution of the same problem, by supposing a
solid nucleus covered with a fluid of different density. No peculiar
novelty has been introduced into this subject, except a method
employed by Laplace for determining the attractions of spheroids of
small eccentricity, which is, as Professor Airy has said, 60 “a calculus
the most singular in its nature, and the most powerful in its effects, of
any which has yet appeared.”
60 Enc. Met. Fig. of Earth, p. 192.

12. Capillary Action.—There is only one other problem of the

statics of fluids on which it is necessary to say a word,—the doctrine
of Capillary Attraction. Daniel Bernoulli, 61 in 1738, states that he
passes over the subject, because he could not reduce the facts to
general laws: but Clairaut was more successful, and Laplace and
Poisson have since given great analytical completeness to his
theory. At present our business is, not so much with the sufficiency of
the theory to explain phenomena, as with the mechanical problem of
which this is an example, which is one of a very remarkable and
important character; namely, to determine the effect of attractions
which are exercised by all the particles of bodies, on the hypothesis
that the 378 attraction of each particle, though sensible when it acts
upon another particle at an extremely small distance from it,
becomes insensible and vanishes the moment this distance
assumes a perceptible magnitude. It may easily be imagined that the
analysis by which results are obtained under conditions so general
and so peculiar, is curious and abstract; the problem has been
resolved in some very extensive cases.
61 Hydrodyn. Pref. p. 5.

13. Motion of Fluids.—The only branch of mathematical

mechanics which remains to be considered, is that which is, we may
venture to say, hitherto incomparably the most incomplete of all,—
Hydrodynamics. It may easily be imagined that the mere hypothesis
of absolute relative mobility in the parts, combined with the laws of
motion and nothing more, are conditions too vague and general to
lead to definite conclusions. Yet such are the conditions of the
problems which relate to the motion of fluids. Accordingly, the mode
of solving them has been, to introduce certain other hypotheses,
often acknowledged to be false, and almost always in some measure
arbitrary, which may assist in determining and obtaining the solution.
The Velocity of a fluid issuing from an orifice in a vessel, and the
Resistance which a solid body suffers in moving in a fluid, have been
the two main problems on which mathematicians have employed
themselves. We have already spoken of the manner in which
Newton attacked both these, and endeavored to connect them. The
subject became a branch of Analytical Mechanics by the labors of D.
Bernoulli, whose Hydrodynamica was published in 1738. This work
rests upon the Huyghenian principle of which we have already
spoken in the history of the centre of oscillation; namely, the equality
of the actual descent of the particles and the potential ascent; or, in
other words, the conservation of vis viva. This was the first analytical
treatise; and the analysis is declared by Lagrange to be as elegant in
its steps as it is simple in its results. Maclaurin also treated the
subject; but is accused of reasoning in such a way as to show that
he had determined upon his result beforehand; and the method of
John Bernoulli, who likewise wrote upon it, has been strongly
objected to by D’Alembert. D’Alembert himself applied the principle
which bears his name to this subject; publishing a Treatise on the
Equilibrium and Motion of Fluids in 1744, and on the Resistance of
Fluids in 1753. His Réflexions sur la Cause Générale des Vents,
printed in 1747, are also a celebrated work, belonging to this part of
mathematics. Euler, in this as in other cases, was one of those who
most contributed to give analytical elegance to the subject. In
addition to the questions which 379 have been mentioned, he and
Lagrange treated the problems of the small vibrations of fluids, both
inelastic and elastic;—a subject which leads, like the question of
vibrating strings, to some subtle and abstruse considerations
concerning the significations of the integrals of partial differential
equations. Laplace also took up the subject of waves propagated
along the surface of water; and deduced a very celebrated theory of
the tides, in which he considered the ocean to be, not in equilibrium,
as preceding writers had supposed, but agitated by a constant series
of undulations, produced by the solar and lunar forces. The difficulty
of such an investigation may be judged of from this, that Laplace, in
order to carry it on, is obliged to assume a mechanical proposition,
unproved, and only conjectured to be true; namely, 62 that, “in a
system of bodies acted upon by forces which are periodical, the
state of the system is periodical like the forces.” Even with this
assumption, various other arbitrary processes are requisite; and it
appears still very doubtful whether Laplace’s theory is either a better
mechanical solution of the problem, or a nearer approximation to the
laws of the phenomena, than that obtained by D. Bernoulli, following
the views of Newton.
62 Méc. Cél. t. ii. p. 218.

In most cases, the solutions of problems of hydrodynamics are not

satisfactorily confirmed by the results of observation. Poisson and
Cauchy have prosecuted the subject of waves, and have deduced
very curious conclusions by a very recondite and profound analysis.
The assumptions of the mathematician here do not represent the
conditions of nature; the rules of theory, therefore, are not a good
standard to which we may refer the aberrations of particular cases;
and the laws which we obtain from experiment are very imperfectly
illustrated by à priori calculation. The case of this department of
knowledge, Hydrodynamics, is very peculiar; we have reached the
highest point of the science,—the laws of extreme simplicity and
generality from which the phenomena flow; we cannot doubt that the
ultimate principles which we have obtained are the true ones, and
those which really apply to the facts; and yet we are far from being
able to apply the principles to explain or find out the facts. In order to
do this, we want, in addition to what we have, true and useful
principles, intermediate between the highest and the lowest;—
between the extreme and almost barren generality of the laws of
motion, and the endless varieties and inextricable complexity of fluid
motions in special cases. 380 The reason of this peculiarity in the
science of Hydrodynamics appears to be, that its general principles
were not discovered with reference to the science itself, but by
extension from the sister science of the Mechanics of Solids; they
were not obtained by ascending gradually from particulars, to truths
more and more general, respecting the motions of fluids; but were
caught at once, by a perception that the parts of fluids are included
in that range of generality which we are entitled to give to the
supreme laws of motions of solids. Thus, Solid Dynamics and Fluid
Dynamics resemble two edifices which have their highest apartment
in common, and though we can explore every part of the former
building, we have not yet succeeded in traversing the staircase of
the latter, either from the top or from the bottom. If we had lived in a
world in which there were no solid bodies, we should probably not
have yet discovered the laws of motion; if we had lived in a world in
which there were no fluids, we should have no idea how insufficient
a complete possession of the general laws of motion may be, to give
us a true knowledge of particular results.

14. Various General Mechanical Principles.—The generalized laws

of motion, the points to which I have endeavored to conduct my
history, include in them all other laws by which the motions of bodies
can be regulated; and among such, several laws which had been
discovered before the highest point of generalization was reached,
and which thus served as stepping-stones to the ultimate principles.
Such were, as we have seen, the Principles of the Conservation of
vis viva, the Principle of the Conservation of the Motion of the Centre
of Gravity, and the like. These principles may, of course, be deduced
from our elementary laws, and were finally established by
mathematicians on that footing. There are other principles which
may be similarly demonstrated; among the rest, I may mention the
Principle of the Conservation of areas, which extends to any number
of bodies a law analogous to that which Kepler had observed, and
Newton demonstrated, respecting the areas described by each
planet round the sun. I may mention also, the Principle of the
Immobility of the plane of maximum areas, a plane which is not
disturbed by any mutual action of the parts of any system. The
former of these principles was published about the same time by
Euler, D. Bernoulli, and Darcy, under different forms, in 1746 and
1747; the latter by Laplace.

To these may be added a law, very celebrated in its time, and the
occasion of an angry controversy, the Principle of least action. 381
Maupertuis conceived that he could establish à priori, by theological
arguments, that all mechanical changes must take place in the world
so as to occasion the least possible quantity of action. In asserting
this, it was proposed to measure the Action by the product of Velocity
and Space; and this measure being adopted, the mathematicians,
though they did not generally assent to Maupertuis’ reasonings,
found that his principle expressed a remarkable and useful truth,
which might be established on known mechanical grounds.

15. Analytical Generality. Connection of Statics and Dynamics.—

Before I quit this subject, it is important to remark the peculiar
character which the science of Mechanics has now assumed, in
consequence of the extreme analytical generality which has been
given it. Symbols, and operations upon symbols, include the whole
of the reasoner’s task; and though the relations of space are the
leading subjects in the science, the great analytical treatises upon it
do not contain a single diagram. The Mécanique Analytique of
Lagrange, of which the first edition appeared in 1788, is by far the
most consummate example of this analytical generality. “The plan of
this work,” says the author, “is entirely new. I have proposed to
myself to reduce the whole theory of this science, and the art of
resolving the problems which it includes, to general formulæ, of
which the simple development gives all the equations necessary for
the solution of the problem.”—“The reader will find no figures in the
work. The methods which I deliver do not require either
constructions, or geometrical or mechanical reasonings; but only
algebraical operations, subject to a regular and uniform rule of
proceeding.” Thus this writer makes Mechanics a branch of Analysis;
instead of making, as had previously been done, Analysis an
implement of Mechanics. 63 The transcendent generalizing genius of
Lagrange, and his matchless analytical skill and elegance, have
made this undertaking as successful as it is striking.
63Lagrange himself terms Mechanics, “An Analytical Geometry
of four dimensions.” Besides the three co-ordinates which
determine the place of a body in space, the time enters as a
fourth co-ordinate. [Note by Littrow.]

The mathematical reader is aware that the language of

mathematical symbols is, in its nature, more general than the
language of words: and that in this way truths, translated into
symbols, often suggest their own generalizations. Something of this
kind has happened in Mechanics. The same Formula expresses the
general condition of Statics and that of Dynamics. The tendency to
generalization which is thus introduced by analysis, makes
mathematicians unwilling to 382 acknowledge a plurality of
Mechanical principles; and in the most recent analytical treatises on
the subject, all the doctrines are deduced from the single Law of
Inertia. Indeed, if we identify Forces with the Velocities which
produce them, and allow the Composition of Forces to be applicable
to force so understood, it is easy to see that we can reduce the Laws
of Motion to the Principles of Statics; and this conjunction, though it
may not be considered as philosophically just, is verbally correct. If
we thus multiply or extend the meanings of the term Force, we make
our elementary principles simpler and fewer than before; and those
persons, therefore, who are willing to assent to such a use of words,
can thus obtain an additional generalisation of dynamical principles;
and this, as I have stated, has been adopted in several recent
treatises. I shall not further discuss here how far this is a real
advance in science.

Having thus rapidly gone through the history of Force and

Attraction in the abstract, we return to the attempt to interpret the
phenomena of the universe by the aid of these abstractions thus
established.

But before we do so, we may make one remark on the history of

this part of science. In consequence of the vast career into which the
Doctrine of Motion has been drawn by the splendid problems
proposed to it by Astronomy, the origin and starting-point of
Mechanics, namely Machines, had almost been lost out of sight.
Machines had become the smallest part of Mechanics, as Land-
measuring had become the smallest part of Geometry. Yet the
application of Mathematics to the doctrine of Machines has led, at all
periods of the Science, and especially in our own time, to curious
and valuable results. Some of these will be noticed in the Additions
to this volume.
 B O O K VII.

THE MECHANICAL SCIENCES.

(CONTINUED.)