Holocaust Encyclopedia. The final three chapters consider the relationship between the Nordic race and the Aryan group of languages. The former catastrophe happened in the declining days of the Roman Republic and the south Italians of to-day are very largely descendants of the nondescript slaves of all races, chiefly from the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, who were imported by the Romans under the Empire to work their vast estates. According to the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, as of 2021, anthropologists know that no combination of physical traits can be used to reliably classify humans into racial groups because race represents social, not biological, categories. ", Bledstein, Burton J. 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. It must be borne in mind that the specializations which characterize the higher races are of relatively recent development, are highly unstable and when mixed with generalized or primitive characters tend to disappear. by Grant, Madison 0 Ratings 3 Want to read 1 Currently reading 0 Have read Overview View 10 Editions Details Reviews Lists Related Books Publish Date 1922 Publisher Scribner Pages Some navigated below the depths, while others floated. 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. "Elizabeth Aranda." ", Peake, H.J.E. 4Th rev. The fact that the blood shows as "blue" through the fair Nordic skin is also to be taken into account. Nature cares not for the individual nor how he may be modified by environment. These moral and physical characters are not limited to one race but given traits do occur with more frequency in one race than in another. 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 . 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. After reading The Passing of the Great Race, Congressman Albert Johnson, the Chair of the US House of Representatives Committee on Immigration and Naturalization from the sixty-sixth to the seventy-first Congresses, was impressed by Grants work and reached out to Grant, establishing a casual correspondence between the two according to Spiro. on May 15, 2008, A related article in the November 2019 Harper's Magazine by Doug Henwood, "To Serve Is To Rule - Why We Miss the WASPs". 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. [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. Race feeling may be called prejudice by those whose careers are cramped by it but it is a natural antipathy which serves to maintain the purity of type. The result would be the submergence of the indigenous Nordic races under a corrupt and enfeebled system dominated by inferior races. In the book, the character Tom Buchanan reads a book called The Rise of the Colored Empires by "this man Goddard", a combination of Grant and his colleague Lothrop Stoddard. The Passing of the Great Race had such widespread influence that popular sources such as F. Scott Fitzgeralds novel The Great Gatsby and the popular magazine The Saturday Evening Post referenced the book. Grant also helped establish numerous conservation organizations and parks, such as the Save-the-Redwoods League and Denali National Park in Alaska. The boast of the modern Indian that he is of the same race as his English ruler is entirely without basis in fact and the little swarthy native lives amid the monuments of a departed grandeur, professing the religion and speaking the tongue of his long forgotten Nordic conquerors, without the slightest claim to blood kinship. When the Nazi regime took control of Germany in 1933, Germany passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, which permitted the Nazi Regime to sterilize an estimated 400,000 people against their will according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2016 marks a century since the publication of The 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 . By Terry Gross. Such an admission we can hardly expect from those of inferior races. Hardcover, 150 pages. The first section deals with the basis of race as well as Grant's own stances on political issues of the day (eugenics). 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. In his biography of Grant,Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics and the Legacy of Madison Grant, Jonathan Spiro writes that almost nothing inThe Passing of the Great Raceis original. Rather, the book is a compendium of the work of other scholars, and almost every paragraph can be directly traced back to figures such as the European scientific racists Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. ", Alexander, Charles C. "Prophet of American Racism: Madison Grant and the Nordic Myth. An individual of inferior type or race may profit greatly by good environment. Grant's popular book The Passing of the Great Race combined social Darwinism, scientific racism, and the controversial principles of eugenics to argue that unrestricted immigration and racial mixing would ultimately undermine the superior racial classes and bring about a collapse of civilization in America. 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. This purpose has been accomplished thoroughly, and one of the most far-reaching effects of . 4th rev. The list of venues that no longer host organized races is countless. [6] 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. 1923, C. Scribner's sons. Chamberlains 1899 book Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century), written in Germany, built off of Gobineaus arguments to reaffirm that Aryans were superior to all other races and specifically denounce Jewish people as an inferior race. In addition to Galtons eugenics works, Grant drew from earlier attempts to classify humans into hierarchies according to race. Where two distinct species are located side by side history and biology teach that but one of two things can happen; either one race drives the other out, as the Americans exterminated the Indians and as the Negroes are now replacing the whites in various parts of the South; or else they amalgamate and form a population of race bastards in which the lower type ultimately preponderates. We have shown that the Mediterranean race entered Europe from the south and forms part of a great group of peoples extending into southern Asia, that the Alpine race came from the east through Asia Minor and the valley of the Danube and that its present European distribution is merely the westernmost point of an ethnic pyramid, the base of which rests solidly on the round skulled peoples of the great plateau of central Asia. Emancipation. 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. 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. The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history (IA cu31924029874330).pdf 762 1,235, 288 pages; 5.31 MB The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history (IA passingofgreatra01gran).pdf 850 1,316, 530 pages; 26.95 MB The Passing of the Great Race book cover.jpg 608 973; 458 KB They lack the instinct of self-preservation in a racial sense. In consequence of this change our immigrants now largely represent lowly refugees from "persecution," and other social discards. One of the curious effects of democracy is the unquestionable fact that there is less freedom of the press than under autocratic forms of government. 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. Nordic theory, however, further subdivided Caucasoids into three groups: Nordics (who inhabited Scandinavia, northern Germany, Austria-Hungary, parts of England, Scotland and Ireland, Holland, Flanders, parts of northern France, parts of Russia and northern Poland, and parts of Central Europe), Alpines (whose territory stretched from central Europe, parts of northern Italy, southern Poland to the Balkans/Southeastern Europe, central/southern Russia, Turkey and even into Central Asia), and Mediterraneans ("substantial part of the population of the British Isles, the great bulk of the population of the Iberian Peninsula, nearly one-third of the population of France, Liguria, Italy south of the Apennines and all the Mediterranean coasts and islands, in some of which like Sardinia it exists in great purity. This light colored eye has appeared nowhere else on earth, is a specialization of this subspecies of man only and consequently is of extreme value in the classification of European races. Gobineaus 1853 Essai sur l'ingalit des races humaines (An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races), written in France, asserted that all humans could be categorized as one of three races, white, black, or yellow, and that a racial subgroup of Aryans existed within the white race that were superior to all other races and largely responsible for all major advancements in history. Other articles where Madison Grant is discussed: eugenics: Eugenics organizations and legislation: group, the New York lawyer Madison Grant, aroused considerable pro-eugenic interest through his best-selling book The Passing of the Great Race (1916). 2016 marks a century since the publication of The 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. Grant criticizes charities and philanthropists for intervening in natural selection through their efforts to assist the less fortunate. This same Nordic element, everywhere the type of the sailor, the soldier, the adventurer and the pioneer, was ever the type to migrate to new countries, until the ease of transportation and the desire to escape military service in the last forty years reversed the immigrant tide. In the new world that we are working and fighting for, the world of liberty, of justice and of humanity, we shall save democracy only when democracy discovers its own aristocracy as in the days when our Republic was founded. It really deserves one star for it's completely irrational and misguided claims about racial taxonomies, its pseudo-science and its historical inaccuracies. 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. Department of Sociology, University of South Florida. Each race differs in the relative proportion of what we may term good and bad strains, just as nations do, or, for that matter, sections and classes of the same nation. Price: AU $80.56. According to historian Winston, present-day neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups continue to cite The Passing of the Great Race as foundational to their movement. With the proportional immigration law of 1924, the descendants of the founding Americans won a victory which would last 40 years, until senator Ted Kennedy after pressure from various special interest groups, especially Jewish groups, put this law out of effect with the new immigration laws of 1965 (see the book The Culture of Critique for a detailed description of this by Dr. Kevin MacDonald), but for a time this book (along with the works of his friend Lothrop Stoddard) helped set the national mood that helped secure the immigration restrictions of 1924. And, secondly, great care has been placed on producing an aesthetically appealing volume, graphically and typographically, as befits a classic text ultimately arguing for quality rather than equality. The moral tendency of the heredity interpretation of history is for our day and generation and is in strong accord with the true spirit of the modern eugenics movement in relation to patriotism, namely, the conservation and multiplication for our country of the best spiritual, moral, intellectual and physical forces of heredity; thus only will the integrity of our institutions be maintained in the future. The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew. Then, if the strain survives, it is by the slow reversion to one of the parent types - almost inevitably the lower. He reasons that the Nordic races would become extinct and the United States as it was known would cease to exist, being replaced by a fragmented country, or a corrupted caricature of itself. Osborn was a paleontologist and president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and one of Grants closest friends. Published by Good Press. 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. This, however, is at present a counsel of perfection and we must face conditions as they are. The proposed eugenics programs Grant detailed in The Passing of the Great Race also influenced Hitler and the Nazi regime in Germany, who committed genocide in the name of eugenics. The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History is a 1916 racist and pseudoscientific [1] [2] book by American lawyer, self-styled anthropologist, and proponent of eugenics, Madison Grant (1865-1937). Today, I'm asking you which racing circuit shouldn't have been closed. The message was anti-democratic and anti-Christian, which did not sit well with the patriotic public. Hitler quotes Grants book in his speeches and even sent Grant a letter where he referred to it as his Bible. "The Passing of The Great Race" became an immediate best seller, with new editions in 1918, 1920 and 1921, multiple printings and translations in German, French and Norwegian. ", Woods, Frederick Adams. [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. The Passing of the Great Race helped legitimize concepts of biological race and encouraged scientific racism in the US. In most cases the blood of pioneers has been lost to their race. During Grant's long career as a conservationist he was pivotal in protecting many different species of animals through his environmental and philanthropic organizations. If Grant's elite had predominated in North America, it is no exaggeration to say that the history of the 20th century would have been altogether different" - Richard Spencer, Alternative Right, National Policy Institute. Equality in their minds meant merely that they were just as good Englishmen as their brothers across the sea. 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 The value and efficiency of a population are not numbered by what the newspapers call souls, but by the proportion of men of physical and intellectual vigor. Winston, Andrew S. "The Passing of the Great Race" in, Woods, Frederick Adams. The world has seen many such mixtures and the character of a mongrel race is only just beginning to be understood at its true value. Races must be kept apart by artificial devices of this sort or they ultimately amalgamate and in the offspring the more generalized or lower type prevails. The second part of the book reviews European prehistory as it was known at the time of writing of the book, and then postulates the existence of three European races, which Grant defines as Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean, as well as their physical and mental characteristics. In the brief chapter "Racial Aptitudes," Grant claims that people largely inherit moral, intellectual, and spiritual traits, which results in different racial aptitudes. The tendency in a democracy is toward a standardization of type and a diminution of the influence of genius. Image 26 of The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history, xxii INTRODUCTION proportions and historians and anthropologists, while studying these populations, have been con- cerned chiefly with the recent strata and have neglected the more ancient and submerged types. The section of any community that produces leaders or genius of any sort is only a minute percentage. The monkey people are funny looking. View more articles from Geographical Review.View this article on JSTOR.View. While emphasizing the importance of race, it must not be forgotten that environment, while it does not alter the potential capacity of the stock, can perform miracles in the development of the individual. [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. After the US Supreme Court upheld sterilization laws as constitutional in the 1927 case Buck v. Bell, thirty states passed similar laws, leading to as many as 70,000 forced sterilizations that disproportionately affected poor women of color according to journalist and lawyer Adam Cohen. Outdated, full of Nordic Rassenkunde, but somehow appealing within its mythology. Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, Geographical Review, Vol. I was interested to note the first publish date was 1917 and the book I was reading was reprinted in 1970. He then speculates hereditary links between the proposed Nordic people and the Trojans[4]:159 and between the Prussians and the Spartans. 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. "Reviewed Work(s): The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History by Madison Grant. [15], The book continued to influence the white supremacist movement in the United States in the early 21st century. Rate this book. Critics warned that Grant used uncritical circular reasoning. Denmark, Norway and Sweden are purely Nordic and yearly contribute swarms of a splendid type of immigrants to America and are now, as they have been for thousands of years, the chief nursery and broodland of the master race. This scan is from a reprint printed in the journal of the American Geographical Society. In the democratic forms of government the operation of universal suffrage tends toward the selection of the average man for public office rather than the man qualified by birth, education and integrity. "The Passing of the Great Race or The Racial Basis of European History". Galton described two dimensions of eugenics. In the introduction, Grant expresses that his goal in the book is to explain European history in terms of race, or physical and mental characteristics that he claims are inherited and unchangeable. The Passing of the Great Race (1916) is his most famous work"[2]. The continuity of physical traits and the limitation of the effects of environment to the individual only are now so thoroughly recognized by scientists that it is at most a question of time when the social consequences which result from such crossings will be generally understood by the public at large. Both of these races are, therefore, western extensions of Asiatic subspecies and neither of them can be considered as exclusively European. Mankind emerged from savagery and barbarism under the leadership of selected individuals whose personal prowess, capacity or wisdom gave them the right to lead and the power to compel obedience. Throughout history it is only the race of the leaders that has counted and the most vigorous have been in control and will remain in mastery in one form or another until such time as democracy and its illegitimate offspring, socialism, definitely establish cacocracy [rule by the worst] and the rule of the worst and put an end to progress. In contrast, what Galton called negative eugenics programs attempt to prevent the reproduction of people eugenicists judged to be, to use Grants terms, defective and worthless. Grant argued that negative eugenics was a more practical course of action to pursue in the US because he believed it would be much easier to identify and eradicate the people with the worst genetics than to select a group of people with the best genetics, and restrict the right to have children only to them.