Ragnar Numelin

Ragnar Julius Numelin (28 September 1890 – 12 October 1972) was a Finland-Swedish diplomat, sociologist and non-fiction writer. He served for 35 years in the Finnish foreign service, including as Consul General in Gothenburg and as head of mission in Brussels and Prague. Alongside his diplomatic career he was an active scholar within the Westermarck school of social anthropology and published widely on sociology, ethnology, geography and the history of diplomacy. His best-known work in English is The Beginnings of Diplomacy.

Early life and education Numelin's father, Gustaf Julius Ferdinand Nummelin, was a justice of the Turku Court of Appeal and from 1900 a member of the justice department of the Senate of Finland. He was dismissed from the Senate in 1901 after refusing to accept the conscription law that the Russian imperial government sought to impose during the first period of Russification, but returned to the Senate from 1906 to 1909. His mother was Anna Emilia Sourander. As an adult, Ragnar shortened the family name Nummelin by one letter to Numelin. He studied under Edvard Westermarck, and in 1918 completed a doctoral dissertation in social anthropology on migration patterns among so-called primitive peoples.