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 Passing of the Great Race, Grant calls on the US to enact an extensive eugenics program. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. Interesting efforts to improve the quality as well as the quantity of the population, however, will probably be made in more than one country after the war [World War I] has ended. Recent calculations indicate that there are about 90,000,000 of purely Nordic physical type in Europe out of a total population of 420,000,000. In Grant's view, Nordics probably evolved in a climate which "must have been such as to impose a rigid elimination of defectives through the agency of hard winters and the necessity of industry and foresight in providing the year's food, clothing, and shelter during the short summer. 1923, C. Scribner's sons. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. "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, 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. The first section deals with the basis of race as well as Grant's own stances on political issues of the day (eugenics). "The Biological Racial State: Nazi Racial Hygiene, 19331939." ed. It was to be expected that there would be bitter opposition to those definitions of race which are based on physical and psychical characters that are immutable, rather than upon those derived from language or political allegiance, that are easily altered. Published by Good Press. His desirable characteristics of a people "family life, loyalty, and truth" were claimed to be exclusive products of the "Nordic race". The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History Madison Grant 3.22 126 ratings18 reviews This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. 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. 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. Grant's book and the genre in general were read in Germany, but eugenicists increasingly turned to Nazi Germany for leadership. 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 book presents Grant's view on Europeans, argued to consist of three branches, namely the Alpine, Nordic and Mediterranean races. In the Europe of to-day the amount of Nordic blood in each nation is a very fair measure of its strength in war and standing in civilization. "Passing of the Great Race," Madison Grant (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." He served as the vice president of the Immigration Restriction League from 1922 to his death in 1937. The Passing of the Great Race is an article from Geographical Review, Volume 2. The book was a parody of contemporary writers and would thus be referring to them sarcastically as a "great race". 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 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. 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. In a letter to Grant, Adolf Hitler wrote, "This book is my Bible," and he used large passages of it in his own "Mein Kampf.". 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. 2, No. Nordic theory was strongly embraced by the racial hygiene movement in Germany in the early 1920s and 1930s; however, they typically used the term "Aryan" instead of "Nordic", though the principal Nazi ideologist, Alfred Rosenberg, preferred "Aryo-Nordic"[citation needed] or "Nordic-Atlantean". European history has been written in terms of nationality and of language, but never before in terms of race; yet race has played a far larger part than either language or nationality in moulding the destinies of men; race implies heredity and heredity implies all the moral, social and intellectual characteristics and traits which are the springs of politics and government. Below is the story of Ellen and William Craft, a married couple who escaped . She is concerned only with the perpetuation of the species or type and heredity alone is the medium through which she acts. 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. 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. 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. Although fundamentally flawed - very refreshing! more details. The Passing of the Great Race was influential for politicians working to pass state laws that prohibited interracial marriage in the US. 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 According to Grants biographer Jonathan Spiro, Grants book synthesized a range of racist and pseudoscientific eugenics claims in prose that was accessible to the public. The population of the so-called Baltic provinces of Russia is everywhere Nordic and their affinities are with Scandinavia and Germany rather than with Slavic Moscovy. Grant argues that the Alpines are best suited as agricultural peasants, whereas Mediterraneans are superior in art and other intellectual pursuits. The final three chapters consider the relationship between the Nordic race and the Aryan group of languages. It sometimes happens that an infiltration of population takes place either in the guise of unwilling slaves or of willing immigrants, who fill up waste places and take to the lowly tasks which the lords of the land despise, thus gradually occupying the country and literally breeding out their masters. 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. Osborn was a paleontologist and president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and one of Grants closest friends. He understood that race and culture are inseparable, since the latter can only take root in the former. The first three chapters trace the history of prehistoric peoples in Europe. The Passing of the Great Race: Or, the Racial Basis of European History. The new population understood little and cared less for the institutions of the ancient Republic but they were jealous of their own rights of "Bread and the Circus" - "panem et circenses" - and there began to appear in place of the old Roman religion the mystic rites of Eastern countries so welcome to the plebeian and uneducated soul. 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. ", Alexander, Charles C. "Prophet of American Racism: Madison Grant and the Nordic Myth. 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. The causal way in which he makes sweeping conclusions about the need to control populations in favor of "the Great Race" is truly scary. Americans turned against Grant's ideas in the 1930s; his book was no longer sold, and his supporters fell away. 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. A disturbing book to read when considering that Madison Grant was a strong influencer of the early eugenicists in the USA (Davenport most specifically) and that his unscientific musings on the use of skulls shape and language as evidence of racial superiority and weakness. Rate this book. "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. Women in all human races, as the females among all mammals, tend to exhibit the older, more generalized and primitive traits of the past of the race. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved.". He specifically promotes the idea of the Nordic race as a key social group responsible for human development; thus the subtitle of the book is The Racial Basis of European History. "Passing of the Great Race (1916)." 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. He also attributed criticism of the first edition of the book to widespread anti-German sentiment during World War I. Franz Boas, a Jewish immigrant from Germany and professor of anthropology at Columbia University in New York City wrote one of the most critical reviews of The Passing of the Great Race. Using that data, Ripley classified Europeans into three distinct races, whom he called Teutonic, Alpine, and Mediterranean, based on features such as stature, eye color, and skull shape. The book was translated into several European languages in its day. The effort now being made in America to settle undesirable immigrants on farms may, from the viewpoint of race replacement, be more dangerous than allowing them to remain in crowded Ghettos or tenements. Furthermore, the AAPA stresses genetic differences among humans are not fixed along racial lines in a way that would justify classifying humans into different biological groups. 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. The book appeared when the anti-German propaganda machine was shifting into high gear, with images of German soldiers raping nuns and bombing cathedrals. Outdated, full of Nordic Rassenkunde, but somehow appealing within its mythology. He also doesn't like universal suffrage, socialists, labor unions, or Jews, none of which were a surprise given that, you know, he's a racist asshole. "The Passing of the Great Race or The Racial Basis of European History". 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. The Nazi Gestapo referred to Jews in hiding as "U-Boats" to survive under the Third Reich. [13], Grant advocated restricted immigration to the United States through limiting immigration from East Asia and Southern Europe; he also advocated efforts to purify the American population though selective breeding. His fantastical theories espouse the idea that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human beings. 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. 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". The Passing of the Great Race draws so heavily on Ripleys data that the book is one of only two references explicitly noted by Grant in his introduction to the first edition. In America we have nearly succeeded in destroying the privilege of birth; that is, the intellectual and moral advantage a man of good stock brings into the world with him. Grant made one major alteration to Ripleys classification system, changing Ripleys term Teutonic, a word associated with Germany, to Nordic, generally associated with Scandinavian countries. 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." In the chapters "Race and Habitat" and "The Competition of Races," Grant considers how natural selection occurs in humans of the modern world through disease and competition. A.B.S. We are now engaged in destroying the privilege of wealth; that is, the reward of successful intelligence and industry and in some quarters there is developing a tendency to attack the privilege of intellect and to deprive a man of the advantage gained from an early and thorough classical education. 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. Starting from the now-discredited assumption that Europeans, Africans, and Asians are distinct groups, Grant believed that Europeans, while overall allegedly superior to Africans and Asians, could be further classified into distinct races. It may be latent through several generations of obscurity and then flare up when the opportunity comes. 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. They either died childless or left half breeds behind them. The Nordic realm includes nearly all the northern third of France with extensions into the fertile southwest; all the rich lowlands of Flanders; all Holland; the northern half of Germany with extensions up the Rhine and down the Danube; and the north of Poland and of Russia. 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. The monkey people are funny looking. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. The rest of the book is where Grant theorized that the Thirty Years War and the Napoleonic Wars had decimated the strong Nordic and Teutonic populations of Germany and France, forever changing the demographics, and allowing weak and cowardly men, who had failed to fight, to replace the great bloodlines. 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. During Grant's long career as a conservationist he was pivotal in protecting many different species of animals through his environmental and philanthropic organizations. "The Supreme Court Ruling that led to 70,000 Forced Sterilizations." In contrast, Grant claims that Nordics are superior soldiers, sailors, and explorers, but above all, they are skillful leaders. 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 Romans died out but the slaves survived and their descendants form the great majority of the south Italians of to-day. [citation needed], Grant became a part of popular culture in 1920s America. "[4] Grant categorized the Alpines as being the lowest of the three European races, with the Nordics as the pinnacle of civilization. Slaves began to be imported into Italy in numbers in the second century B. C. to work the large plantations - latifundia - of the wealthy Romans. 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. According to Spiro, Grants interest in conservation naturally led to his interest in eugenics, as Grant saw both movements as a way of preserving the old country from threats of extinction. The book was originally published in 1916, but Wermod & Wermod Publishing Group have through their imprint The Palingenesis Project updated the text to modern standards by adding bibliographical data, index, explanatory footnotes and system of citation. Kurtagi published his art on many volumes of far-right books. Though the anti-Semitic views of Gobineau and Chamberlain can be found in The Passing of the Great Race, Grant most closely follows the racial classification proposed by economist William Z. Ripley in Ripleys 1899 book The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History is a 1916 book by American lawyer, self-styled anthropologist, and fan of the pseudo-science of eugenics, Madison Grant (1865-1937). It is scarcely necessary to cite the universal distrust, often contempt, that the half-breed between two sharply contrasted races inspires the world over. Equality in their minds meant merely that they were just as good Englishmen as their brothers across the sea. 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 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. 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. Blond hair also comes everywhere from the Nordic subspecies and from nowhere else. Or the racial basis of European history Nature had granted to the Americans of a century ago the greatest opportunity in recorded history to produce in the isolation of a continent a powerful and racially homogeneous people and had provided for the experiment a pure race of one of the most gifted and vigorous stocks on earth, a stock free from the diseases, physical and moral, which have again and again sapped the vigor of the older lands. web pages 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. ", Peake, H.J.E. The words "that all men are created equal" have since been subtly falsified by adding the word "free," although no such expression is found in the original document and the teachings based on these altered words in the American public schools of to-day would startle and amaze the men who formulated the Declaration. On the other hand, a member of a superior race in bad surroundings may, and very often does, sink to an extremely low level. Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. For the world's future the destruction of wealth is a small matter compared with the destruction of the best human strains, for wealth can be renewed while these strains of the real human aristocracy once lost are lost forever. Hitler quotes Grants book in his speeches and even sent Grant a letter where he referred to it as his Bible. The ideal in eugenics toward which statesmanship should be directed is, of course, improvement in quality rather than quantity. [15], The book continued to influence the white supremacist movement in the United States in the early 21st century. 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). 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. In the age of Trump, Madison Grant's influential work of scientific racism takes on a new salience. 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). The book details both the argued earliest known beginnings of the these groups, and follows their development all the way up to the time of the publishing of the book. 4th rev. Charles Scribners Sons in New York City, New York, published the volume. "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. Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. It gave us, when mixed and invigorated with Nordic elements, the most splendid of all civilizations, that of ancient Hellas, and the most enduring of political organizations, the Roman State. [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. Galton described two dimensions of eugenics. The book is short and sweet, getting straight to the point without much complication. He can breed from the best or he can eliminate the worst by segregation or sterilization. Furthermore, Grant warns of the dangers of what he calls race suicide, where the superior Nordic race declines in population numbers through low birth rates and frequent wars, while inferior races grow in numbers by having more children and ultimately replace the allegedly superior races. The second chapter, "Paleolithic Man," draws directly from Henry Fairfield Osborns Men of the Old Stone Age. Generally well received at the time in both the popular and scholarly press and going through four editions and multiple reprints, Theodore Roosevelt described The Passing of the Great Race as 'a capital work'. Grant expounds a theory of Nordic superiority, claiming that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human "races". In the field of art its superiority to both the other European races is unquestioned. The US Supreme Court did not overturn such laws, called anti-miscegenation laws, until the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case. This purpose has been accomplished thoroughly, and one of the most far-reaching effects of the doctrines enunciated in this volume and in the discussions that followed its publication was the decision of the Congress of the United States to adopt discriminatory and restrictive measures against the immigration of undesirable races and peoples. 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. History. 4Th rev. In the French Revolution the majority, calling itself "the people," deliberately endeavored to destroy the higher type and something of the same sort was in a measure done after the American Revolution by the expulsion of the Loyalists and the confiscation of their lands, with a resultant loss to the growing nation of good race strains, which were in the next century replaced by immigrants of far lower type. I was interested to note the first publish date was 1917 and the book I was reading was reprinted in 1970. Simplified spelling is a step in this direction. A record of the desperate efforts of the conqueror classes in India to preserve the purity of their blood persists until this very day in their carefully regulated system of castes. 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. Page 4 - In the city of New York, and elsewhere in the United States, there is a native American aristocracy resting upon layer after layer of immigrants of lower races, and the native American, while, of course, disclaiming the distinction of a patrician class, nevertheless has, up to this time, supplied the leaders of thought and the control of capital, of education, and of the religious . The term "Caucasian race" has ceased to have any meaning except where it is used, in the United States, to contrast white populations with Negroes or Indians or in the Old World with Mongols. Instead, he argues that sterilization programs for people of inferior genetics are much better suited to protect people of the Nordic race in the US. This is matter of every-day observation and the working of this law of nature is not influenced or affected by democratic institutions or by religious beliefs. It is, therefore, the Homo europaeus, the white man par excellence. This scan is from a reprint printed in the journal of the American Geographical Society. with a documentary supplement / with prefaces by Henry Fairfield Osborn. As a result, Grant believes that democracies that average people run are less efficient than aristocracies ruled by men qualified by noble birth. 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. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. Grant expounds a theory of Nordic superiority, claiming that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human "races". 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. He was also a member of two anti-immigration lobbying groups, the American Defense Society and the Immigration Restriction League.