The Passing of the Great Race, Or, the Racial Basis of European History Madison Grant History 1917 In 1916, eugenicist Madison Grant [4] published the book The Passing of the Great Race; or The Racial Basis of European History, hereafter The Passing of the Great Race, where he claimed that Expand 127 PDF xxviii "The Passing of the Great Race," in its original form, was designed by the author to rouse his fellow-Americans to the overwhelming importance of race and to the folly of the "Melting Pot" theory, even at the expense of bitter controversy. Charles Scribners Sons in New York City, New York, published the volume. 4Th rev. Grant reasons that the new immigrants were of different races and were creating separate societies within America including ethnic lobby groups, criminal syndicates, and political machines which were undermining the socio-political structure of the country and in turn the traditional Anglo-Saxon colonial stocks, as well as all Nordic stocks. 2016 marks a century since the publication ofThe Passing of the Great Race, a book described by the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould as the most influential tract of American scientific racism. Its author, Madison Grant, a genteel dabbler with impeccable establishment ties, was a pure and unabashed bigot, a patrician who defended social inequality as the outcome of biological fact. This book should be mandatory reading for all white people--especially those of school age, and double especially, by those attending Marxist indoctrination centers in colleges and universities. He can breed from the best or he can eliminate the worst by segregation or sterilization. Born in New York city, he graduated early and with honours from Yale University and subsequently received his law degree from Columbia Law School. Grant's book and the genre in general were read in Germany, but eugenicists increasingly turned to Nazi Germany for leadership. "[1], "Madison Grant (1865 - 1937) was an American lawyer, historian, physical anthropologist, conservationist, and eugenicist. By the time of Grants death in 1937, Passing had reportedly sold 16,000 copies in the US according to Grants New York Times Obituary. Buy It Now. Blond hair also comes everywhere from the Nordic subspecies and from nowhere else. During Grant's long career as a conservationist he was pivotal in protecting many different species of animals through his environmental and philanthropic organizations. In Rome, when this change in blood was substantially complete, the state could no longer be operated under Republican forms of government and the Empire arose to take its place. The Passing of the Great Race (1916) is his most famous work"[2]. History In 1916, eugenicist Madison Grant [4] published the book The Passing of the Great Race; or The Racial Basis of European History, hereafter The Passing of the Great Race, where he claimed that northern Europeans, or Nordics, are biologically and culturally superior to the rest of humanity. In Hindustan the blond Nordic invaders forced their Aryan language on the aborigines, but their blood was quickly and utterly absorbed in the darker strains of the original owners of the land. Historically, topically, and geographically, Grant's magnum opus covers a vast amount of ground, broadly tracing the racial history of Europeans from prehistoric times to the . Book Source: Digital Library of India Item 2015.527634. dc.contributor.author: Madison Grant dc.date.accessioned: 2015-10-01T21:01:28Z Unless such an instinct develops their race will perish, as do all organisms which disregard this primary law of nature. "The Passing of the Great Race is one of the most prominent racially oriented books of all times, written by the most influencial American conservationist that ever lived. Nordic theory, in Grant's formulation, was largely copied from the work of Arthur de Gobineau that appeared in the 1850s, except that Gobineau used the study of language while Grant used physical anthropology to define races. The section of any community that produces leaders or genius of any sort is only a minute percentage. Other messages in his work include recommendations to install civil organizations through the public health system to establish quasi-dictatorships in their particular fields with the administrative powers to segregate unfavorable races in ghettos. "Johnson, Albert." This is a purely European type, in the sense that it has developed its physical characters and its civilization within the confines of that continent. Of course, after reading this, it was hard to really take anything he had to say seriously. I read this more because I heard it was the book that most influenced Hitler and I was wondering what would influence him. . Whether we like to admit it or not, the result of the mixture of two races, in the long run, gives us a race reverting to the more ancient, generalized and lower type. The American sold his birthright in a continent to solve a labor problem. Critics warned that Grant used uncritical circular reasoning. Some of those Nazi anthropologists, such as Eugen Fischer and Hans F. K. Gnther, were even friends with Grant and stayed in contact with him until his death according to Spiro. The Passing is an attempt to "elucidate the meaning of history in terms of race"; that is, according to "physical and psychical characters" rather than "political grouping" or "spoken language." The Passing of the Great Race; or, The Racial Basis of European History A. K. History Nature IN this work Mr. Grant takes up a theme which was broached by Dr. Gustav Retzius in his Huxley lecture to the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1909. It is everywhere characterized by certain unique specializations, namely, wavy brown or blond hair and blue, gray or light brown eyes, fair skin, high, narrow and straight nose, which are associated with great stature, and a long skull, as well as with abundant head and body hair. In addition to Galtons eugenics works, Grant drew from earlier attempts to classify humans into hierarchies according to race. Anthropologist Franz Boas called The Passing of the Great Race a modern retelling of works by Joseph Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, even though Grant does not explicitly cite them. Human society is like a serpent dragging its long body on the ground, but with the head always thrust a little in advance and a little elevated above the earth. Or the racial basis of European history Additionally, a 1921 article by then Vice President Calvin Coolidge published in Good Housekeeping echoed many of the ideas presented in The Passing of the Great Race, as Coolidge called for immigration restriction and condemned interracial marriages. This purpose has been accomplished thoroughly, and one of the most far-reaching effects of . Three hundred years later the great Muscovite expansion began, first over the steppes to the Urals and then across Siberian tundras and forests to the waters of the Pacific, taking up in its course much Mongolian blood, especially during the early stages of its advance. These children were often fathered by their white masters, which led to their fair skin and resemblance to other white children. web pages The first section deals with the basis of race as well as Grant's own stances on political issues of the day (eugenics). "The Passing of the Great Race or The Racial Basis of European History". The book was a parody of contemporary writers and would thus be referring to them sarcastically as a "great race". A supposedly scientific look at race by a man who otherwise did some great conversation work, helping to establish national parks, etc. They either died childless or left half breeds behind them. The first edition, published in 1916, included a preface authored by Osborn, the president of the American Museum of Natural History at the time. ed., with a documentary supplement, with prefaces by Henry Fairfield Osborn. A huge inspiration to me, although I cannot recommned it to other readers. ed. Physical and psychical disharmonies are common among crosses between Indians, negroes and whites, but where the parents are more closely related racially we often obtain individuals occupying the border-land between genius and insanity. "[4] Grant categorized the Alpines as being the lowest of the three European races, with the Nordics as the pinnacle of civilization. This scan is from a reprint printed in the journal of the American Geographical Society. According to Grants history, the greatest cultural achievements in Europe and its former colonies can be attributed to an influx of Nordic blood into a region, while social collapses are due to a loss of Nordic control. Definite traces remain of the blood of the Mongols both in isolated and compact groups in south Russia and also scattered throughout the whole country as far west as the German boundary. To utilize and adapt to human needs the forces and the raw materials of nature, to invent new processes, to establish new principles, and to elucidate and unravel the laws that control the universe call for genius. 4th rev. The Passing of the Great Race was mentioned during the 1945 and 1946 Nuremberg Trials held in Nuremberg, Germany, that prosecuted Nazi leadership for war crimes committed during World War II. "Some hundred years after its publication, what strikes me about The Passing of the Great Race is not just its originality - as a racial history, it was the first of its kind - and not just Grant's skill in integrating the most advanced evolutionary science of his day with studies of history and culture. This, however, is at present a counsel of perfection and we must face conditions as they are. In fact, the primary achievement of this arcane, humorless book may be simply that it was so influential despite borrowing so heavily from other writers whose work Grant digested. They lack the instinct of self-preservation in a racial sense. Publication date 1917 Topics C-DAC Collection digitallibraryindia; JaiGyan Language English. How this scheme of administration will ultimately work out remains to be seen but from a racial point of view it will inevitably increase the preponderance of the lower types and cause a corresponding loss of efficiency in the community as a whole. Grant reasons that the United States has always been a Nordic country, consisting of Nordic immigrants from England, Scotland, and the Netherlands in Colonial times and of Nordic immigrants from Ireland and Germany in later times. Machines may be able to crunch number and analyze data, but they can't match the human touch when it come to customer service, teamwork, and collaboration. An acutely prophetic "no more brother wars" book, published in 1916. We Americans must realize that the altruistic ideals which have controlled our social development during the past century and the maudlin sentimentalism that has made America "an asylum for the oppressed," are sweeping the nation toward a racial abyss. The Passing of the Great Race; or, The Racial Bias of European History Madison Grant Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916. 2, No. While reading it, you should take into consideration the era of which it was written, for many of his points or examples are now obsolete. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him, or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of misguided sentimentalism. The Passing of the Great Race is one of the most prominent racially oriented books of all times, written by the most influential American conservationist that ever lived. The list of venues that no longer host organized races is countless. He supposes the existence of events and contacts and movements without support, neglects the facts that contradict his models, and emphasises beyond all reason heredity over environment (as racists do). On the other hand, a member of a superior race in bad surroundings may, and very often does, sink to an extremely low level. The Passing of the Great Racehas had many uses over the years. Chivalry and knighthood, and their still surviving but greatly impaired counterparts, are peculiarly Nordic traits, and feudalism, class distinctions, and race pride among Europeans are traceable for the most part to the north. [4]:160 This part of the book ties together strands of speculation regarding Aryan migration theory, ethnology, anthropology, and history into a broad survey of the historical rise and fall, and expansion and retraction, of the European races from their homelands. In The Passing of the Great Race, Grant argues that there are three distinct European races and that the supposedly superior Nordic race is responsible for most notable human achievements and progress. In America, also, strange temples, which would have been abhorrent to our Colonial ancestors, are multiplying and our streets and parks are turned over to monuments to foreign "patriots," designed not to please the artistic sense of the passer-by but to gratify the national preference of some alien element in the electorate. In our Southern States Jim Crow cars and social discriminations have exactly the same purpose and justification. An amazing book and should be read by all especially white teenagers and young adults. Sweden, after sending forth her Goths and other early Teutonic tribes, turned her attention to the shores of the eastern Baltic, colonized the coast of Finland and the Baltic provinces and supplied also a strong Scandinavian element to the aristocracy of Russia. "Whose Country is This? In part one, "Race, Language, and Nationality," Grant argues that democratic institutions that state that all humans are equal are dangerous. Grant claimed that the Nordic race was at risk of extinction and advocated for the creation of laws in the US to decrease the population of people he considered inferior. The passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 significantly limited the quota of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, who Grant claimed were undesirable, and prevented nearly all immigration from east Asia. He then speculates hereditary links between the proposed Nordic people and the Trojans[4]:159 and between the Prussians and the Spartans. "The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant. So long as there is in the world a freely breeding stock or race that has in it an inherent capacity for development and growth, mankind will continue to ascend until, possibly through the selection arid regulation of breeding as intelligently applied as in the case of domestic animals, it will control its own destiny and attain moral heights as yet unimagined. The impulse upward, however, is supplied by a very small number of nations and by a very small proportion of the population in such nations. When individuals of perfect blond type occur, as sometimes in Greek islands, we may suspect a recent visit of sailors from a passing ship but when only single characters remain spread thinly, but widely, over considerable areas, like the blondness of the Atlas Berbers or of the Albanian mountaineers, we must search in the dim past for the origin of these blurred traits of early invaders. The Nordic, in his hypothesis, was "Homo europaeus, the white man par excellence. His most renowned work, The Passing of the Great Race: or the Racial Basis of European History (1916), argued for the preservation of America as a 'civilization preserve' for the Nordic race, advocating for immigration only from the founding stock of Anglo-Saxons and other Nordics from north-western Europe. The defense presented The Passing of the Great Race as evidence to argue that many Nazi eugenics programs were inspired by policies in the US and therefore it was hypocritical for the US to try them for successfully enacting their own ideas. The book appeared when the anti-German propaganda machine was shifting into high gear, with images of German soldiers raping nuns and bombing cathedrals. What the Melting Pot actually does in practice can be seen in Mexico, where the absorption of the blood of the original Spanish conquerors by the native Indian population has produced the racial mixture which we call Mexican and which is now engaged in demonstrating its incapacity for self-government. According to Grant, Nordics were in a dire state in the modern world, where after their abandonment of cultural values rooted in religious or superstitious proto-racialism, they were close to committing "race suicide" by miscegenation and being outbred by inferior stock, which was taking advantage of the transition. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald made a lightly disguised reference to Grant in The Great Gatsby. The Emperors to please the vulgar erected from time to time new shrines to strange gods utterly unknown to the Romans of the early Republic. Grant argues that the Alpines are best suited as agricultural peasants, whereas Mediterraneans are superior in art and other intellectual pursuits. Ernest Hemingway might also have alluded to The Passing of the Great Race in the subtitle of his book The Torrents of Spring; A Romantic Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great Race. "Racist"? Copyright Arizona Board of Regents Licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/, The Galton Society for the Study of the Origin and Evolution of Man, https://experts.uoguelph.ca/andrew-winston, https://cisneros.columbian.gwu.edu/elizabeth-vaquera, http://sociology.usf.edu/faculty/earanda/, https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/J/JOHNSON,-Albert-(J000114)/, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/28/us/times-appointment.html, https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/immigration-united-states-timeline, https://www.unzcloud.net/PDF/PERIODICAL/NewRepublic-1917jan13/28-30//, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/07/469478098/the-supreme-court-ruling-that-led-to-70-000-forced-sterilizations, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.39871, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/adam-serwer-madison-grant-white-nationalism/583258/, https://archive.org/details/DefendingTheMasterRaceConservationEugenicsMadisonGrantJonathanSpiro2008/mode/2up, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-biological-state-nazi-racial-hygiene-1933-1939. The native Americans [American Nordics] are splendid raw material, but have as yet only an imperfectly developed national consciousness. [16] The book was also the earliest emergence of the white genocide conspiracy theory as The Passing of the Great Race specifically focuses on the "race suicide" of Nordics. "Dr. Elizabeth Vaquera." With the support of his friend Theodore Roosevelt, who later served as the twenty-sixth President of the United States from 1901 to 1909, Grant co-founded the New York Zoological Society in 1895 and the Bronx Zoo in 1899 to promote wildlife conservation and the study of animals. As long as this Gothic nobility controlled the Spanish states during the endless crusades against the Moors, Spain belonged to the Nordic kingdoms, but when their blood became impaired by losses in wars waged outside of Spain and in the conquest of the Americas, the sceptre fell from this noble race into the hands of the native Iberian, who had not the physical vigor or the intellectual strength to maintain the world empire built up by the stronger race. Deep seated Castilian traditions associate aristocracy with blondness and the sangre azul, or blue blood of Spain, probably refers to the blue eye of the Goth, whose traditional claim to lordship is also shown in the Spanish name for gentleman, "hidalgo," said to mean "the son of the Goth." The Nazi Gestapo referred to Jews in hiding as "U-Boats" to survive under the Third Reich. Eye color is of very great importance in race determination because all blue, gray or green eyes in the world to-day came originally from the same source, namely, the Nordic race of northern Europe. The good people of the heroic Nordic race, he cried, were always at risk of subversion by their darker-skinned inferiors, even in the land of Horatio Alger, where heredity, with enough sweat from ones brow, was not supposed to trump environment or self-determination. "Reviewed Work(s): The Passing of the Great Race: Or the Racial Basis of European History by Madison Grant. The act was not overturned until the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. In a 1923 summary of book reviews on The Passing of the Great Race, Woods observed that the book was popular among the general public and favorably reviewed in scientific journals such as Science, though there were some unfavorable reviews. Under modern social conditions it would be extremely difficult in the first instance to determine which were the most desirable types, except in the most general way and even if a satisfactory selection were finally made, it would be in a democracy a virtual impossibility to limit by law the right to breed to a privileged and chosen few. For 200 years the Spanish infantry had no equal in Europe but this distinction disappeared with the opening decades of the seventeenth century. The final three chapters consider the relationship between the Nordic race and the Aryan group of languages. These inferior races and classes are prompt to recognize in such an admission the very real danger to themselves of being relegated again to their former obscurity and subordinate position in society. Francis Galton, the half-cousin of the naturalist Charles Darwin, first coined the term eugenics, Greek for "well-born," in 1883. With the remaining race, the Nordic, however, the case is different. In 1916, eugenicist Madison Grant published the book The Passing of the Great Race; or The Racial Basis of European History, hereafter The Passing of the Great Race, where he claimed that northern Europeans, or Nordics, are biologically and culturally superior to the rest of humanity. Even after the statute was passed, Grant continued to be irked that even a smattering of non-Nordics were allowed to immigrate to the country each year. I started to read to book for the sole purpose of finding intellectual ideas present in the contemporary right-wing terrorism and the growing "eco-fascist" movement, but unfortunately didn't find any, so the book is only valuable as a historical account of early American fascination with eugenics. [7] Thus, whenever such traits were found in a non-Nordic culture, Grant said that they were evidence of a Nordic influence or admixture, rather than casting doubt on their supposed exclusive Nordic origin. The Passing of the Great Race helped legitimize concepts of biological race and encouraged scientific racism in the US. Grant criticizes charities and philanthropists for intervening in natural selection through their efforts to assist the less fortunate. Adolf Hitler referred to The Passing of the Great Race as his Bible, and during the Nuremberg Trials in the 1940s, Nazi leaders who were prosecuted for war crimes committed during World War II presented the book as evidence that eugenics did not solely originate in Germany but rather had deep roots in the United States. This importation of slaves and the ultimate extension of the Roman citizenship to their manumitted descendants and to inferior races throughout the growing Empire and the losses in internal and foreign wars, ruined the state. [6] The salvation of humanity will then lie in the chance survival of some sane barbarians who may retain the basic truth that inequality and not equality is the law of nature. According to Grant, significantly increasing the birth rate of superior races is unlikely to succeed due to the difficulty of restricting the right to have children only to people with the most desirable genetics in a democracy. Such demands on energy, if long continued, would produce a strong, virile, and self-contained race which would inevitably overwhelm in battle nations whose weaker elements had not been purged by the conditions of an equally severe environment" (p.170). As the vice president of the Immigration Restriction League, Grant argued that immigration quotas at the time needed to be reduced. [12] Versions of their debates on the relative influence of biological and social factors persist in contemporary anthropology. The country villages and the farms are the nurseries of nations, while cities are consumers and seldom producers of men. [14] In Europe, however, Nordic theory was adopted during the 1930s by the Nazis and others. Kurtagi published his art on many volumes of far-right books. 5 (Nov., 1916), pp. Holocaust Encyclopedia. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. Grant claims that the members of contemporary American Protestant society who could trace their ancestry back to Colonial times were being out-bred by immigrant and "inferior" lower-class White racial stocks. ", Gidley, M. "Notes on F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Passing of the Great Race. Whenever we find blondness among the darker races of the earth we may be sure some Nordic wanderer has passed that way. Emancipation. This was also true in the early days of our Western frontiersmen, who individually were a far finer type than the settlers who followed them. If the Melting Pot is allowed to boil without control and we continue to follow our national motto and deliberately blind ourselves to all "distinctions of race, creed or color," the type of native American of Colonial descent will become as extinct as the Athenian of the age of Pericles, and the Viking of the days of Rollo.
