Will-o'-the-wisp – on the map because of their influence as an ideologue of racism, as an object of critique.
Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races
Four volumes (1853–55) claiming that the rise and fall of civilisations is determined by race and that “mixing” leads to decline; scientifically baseless, it became a founding text of racist ideology.
Introduction
Gobineau published the four volumes of the Essay between 1853 and 1855, while serving as a diplomat, and dedicated them to King George V of Hanover. The book offers a universal history in which civilisations rise through the creative power of a “white” and especially “Aryan” race and decline through “mixing” with other races. Its tone is pessimistic and aristocratic: Gobineau saw modern democracy as a symptom of decline, not as a goal. Tocqueville, to whom he sent the book, rejected it in their correspondence as probably false and certainly pernicious. The doctrine has no scientific basis. It is read today as a document in the history of racist ideology, especially through its German reception by the Wagner circle, Ludwig Schemann’s translation (1898–1901) and Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
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Connections
Taken up in
- The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century1899 · Houston Stewart Chamberlain
Criticized in
- The Equality of the Human Races1885 · Anténor Firmin
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