I am presently reading "The Highly Civilized Man...Richard Burton and the Victorian World" The book presents Sir Richard in different light than most biographies written of him. The author, Dane Kennedy, sees Burton as an observer and a critic in this age of proto globalisation. Burton finds, in his research of peoples, that other societies can and do find solutions to life problems as relevant or more relevant than standard British Victorian judgement. However, Burton still carried with him the baggage of British racism, which we in America have borrowed and expanded. A quote stands out here:
" 'Race' is the sort of word most often used to signify the imperial effort to rank and sort peoples".