Crawfurd wrote in 1861 in the "Transactions" of the ESL a paper "On the Conditions Which Favour, Retard, and Obstruct the Early Civilization of Man", in which he argued for deficiencies in the science and technology of Asia. In "On the Numerals as Evidence of the Progress of Civilization" (1863) he argued that the social condition of a people correlates with the numeral words of their language. Crawfurd used domestication frequently as a metaphor. His racist views on black people were laughed at, during the British Association meeting at Birmingham in 1865.