He gave eugenics its name in 1883 and provided it with much of its ideology. Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin, argued that the successful had innate capacities which the unsuccessful lacked and minimized the importance of the environment on an individual. In 1869, he published Hereditary Genius in which he reinforced his theory that nature was more influential than nurture in the development of man. Social Darwinists argued that societies, like organisms, evolved by a natural process through which the most fit members survived or were most successful. Also, the political brother to social Darwinism is Imperialism which involves people who viewed themselves as culturally superior and more fit to rule those that they deemed less advanced.
Imperialism is responsible, along with industrialization, for the instigation of eugenics.
Between the 1890s and 1930s, the eugenics movement gathered strength as an elitist association. The scientific creeds of Darwinism and eugenics offered models for developing an ordered society. Whereas the state was unwilling to intervene in the economy to curb the negative effects of industrialization, eugenics offered a less bureaucratic solution in planning intervention in family life and sexuality. The state was run by the same class of elitists who supported eugenics and found no problem with liberal interpretations of the law. Without the force of liberalism backing the state, eugenics might have remained hypothetical.