The Ethnological Society of London was founded in 1843 by a breakaway faction of the Aborigines' Protection Society (APS). It quickly became one of England's leading scientific societies, and a meeting place not only for students of ethnology but also for archaeologists interested in prehistoric societies. The society's meetings and journal served as a forum for sharing new ideas, and as a clearinghouse for ethnological data. The society's original members were primarily military officers, civil servants, and members of the clergy, but by the early 1860s career scientists in their 20's and 30's had supplanted them. Thomas Henry Huxley, Augustus Pitt Rivers, Edward Tylor, Henry Christy, John Lubbock, and A. W. Franks all figured prominently in the society's affairs after 1860.

The APS had been founded by Quakers in order to promote a specific social and political agenda. The Ethnological Society, though primarily a scientific organization, retained some of its predecessor's liberal outlook and activist bent. The "Ethnologicals" generally supported Charles Darwin against his critics, championed efforts to abolish slavery, and rejected the more extreme forms of scientific racism.

The Anthropological Society of London was founded, in 1863, as an institutional home for those who found the Ethnological's politics difficult to stomach. The two societies coexisted warily for several years, but merged in 1871 into the Royal Anthropological Institute.