Scientific racism in Germany/Arthur de Gobineau/An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races

thumb An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (original title: Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines; German: Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenrassen) is a four-volume essay on racial theory, which the French diplomat and writer Arthur de Gobineau published between 1853 and 1855 with the Parisian publisher Didot. Background Arthur de Gobineau Arthur de Gobineau identified as a member of the French aristocracy. He was educated by a private tutor and then at a secondary school in Switzerland, read extensively, and continued his education autodidactically throughout his life. He was particularly interested in Oriental studies, which had become fashionable with German Romanticism, and especially in the language, literature, and history of Persia. He was unable to complete his studies at a French military academy and subsequently spent his life as a diplomat. Although he was successful in this career, which took him to Persia twice, he primarily considered himself a writer and poet; he wrote poems, novels, plays, and travelogues, and while he was able to publish them, he never achieved literary success. Gobineau's intention In writing his Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, Gobineau made extensive use of historical, philological and ethnographic sources, and he certainly claimed scientific validity for this work; on the other hand, he was quite aware of the speculative nature of his attempt at a grand historical synthesis that goes beyond individual scientific methods, and for good reason called the work an "essay". Gobineau wrote the Essay under the immediate impression of the Revolution of 1848. As a legitimist, he considered the French Revolution a catastrophe, deeply rejected the bourgeois society that arose afterward, and saw the Revolution of 1848 and the Second Republic as sealing France's fate. He resented destruction of the aristocratic order, which he considered to be a natural one. The Essay is essentially a doctrine of nobility in biological disguise; aristocratic rule and privileges are justified in biological language. Method Gobineau's method rests on a radical racial determinism: all historical and cultural developments are derived from the racial composition of a population. Instead of empirical research, he proceeds deductively from preconceived categories—Whites as founders of civilization, Yellows as imitative, Blacks as wild—and from these premises he explains every historical phenomenon. Where evidence is lacking, he replaces it with supposedly "logical" conclusions: civilizations must have been founded by Whites; instability must stem from mixture. He selects his sources selectively, ignoring or reinterpreting any evidence that contradicts him. He treats myths as encoded racial history and uses them as "proof" of White culture-bearers. His linguistic arguments are equally circular: language is meant to indicate race and simultaneously to confirm racial theories; supposed degeneration is taken as the result of mixture, which he has already assumed. Central to his approach is a universal three-stage model: White foundation, mixture, degeneration—a scheme he projects onto all civilizations. Scientific terminology serves only to veil his speculative premises. The result is a closed system that interprets every observation as confirmation of racial theory and merely imitates the appearance of scientific inquiry. Significance Gobineau was inspired by the historian Augustin Thierry, who understood French history as a succession of class struggles, of conflicts between the nobility and the people, viewing the people as Gallic (Celtic) and the French nobility as Frankish and descended from Germanic conquerors, thus as members of different tribes for whom he used the genealogical-historical term "races." However, Gobineau went beyond Thierry—who, unlike him, was also a fervent admirer of the Revolution—and interpreted this conflict literally as a clash between human races, which he described in biological terms and to which he ascribed immutable characteristics. Gobineau thus became the first thinker to understand and narrate history as a succession of conflicts between hostile, biologically distinct human races. He was preceded by Robert Knox, who published his book The Races of Men in Great Britain in 1850. Although an abolitionist, Knox described human history in this book as the history of unequally valuable, biologically distinct human races, but without interpreting it, as Gobineau did, as a succession of race wars. Gobineau and Knox were unaware of each other. What Gobineau couldn't know yet When reading Gobineau's Essay, it's important to consider, among other things, that when he wrote it, he knew and could not have known anything about population genetics, DNA, molecular genetics, Mendelian inheritance, human genetic variation, and the "Out of Africa" theory. All this knowledge only came about as a result of later research. Even Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species wasn't published until 1859. Knowledge of these areas would have fundamentally destroyed Gobineau's theory. Among the subjects that Gobineau, on the contrary, could have been better informed about, since this knowledge was already available in his time and he made serious errors in his text because he ignored it, are comparative linguistics, the Mesopotamian high cultures, the great African kingdoms (Benin, Great Zimbabwe, Songhai Empire) and the South and East Asian religions (Buddhism, Confucianism, Hindu philosophy), among many others. Content All following summaries are based in the German version of the book. Dedication Gobineau dedicated his book to the British King George V. He uses this dedication to explain the book's program. This consists of an "examination of political facts" and of the "hidden causes" that led to the rise and fall of nations, and especially to the revolutions and wars of the 18th and 19th centuries. Here, he already announces that the book will be about the character and value of various "human races".Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Erster Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann XV-XX It was then that I had to allow myself, from conclusion to conclusion, to be deeply penetrated by the certainty that the racial question dominates all other problems of history, holds the key to them, and that the inequality of the races, whose meeting forms a nation, can explain the entire chain of the history of nations. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. First volume, 1902, p. XX Gobineau believes that there are "strong" and "weak races", but he is particularly interested in the former because they are responsible for "everything that exists in terms of human creations, science, art, civilizations, greatness, nobility, and fruitfulness."Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Erster Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann XXI Books 1-6 Gobineau's essay comprises six books spread over four volumes: Volume 1 Content of Book 1 (no subtitle given) Volume 2 Content of Book 2 (Ancient civilizations spreading from Central Asia to the southwest) Content of Book 3 (Civilization spreading from Central Asia to the south and southeast) Volume 3 Content of Book 4 (Semitized civilizations of the Southwest) Content of Book 5 (Semitized European civilization) Volume 4 Content of Book 6 (Occidental civilization) Reception Prefaces of the German edition Editions (selection) French original Essai sur l'inégalité des Races humaines. Tomes I et II, livres 1 à 4 Paris Firmin Didot 1853 Essai sur l'inégalité des Races humaines. Tomes III et IV, livres 5 et 6 Paris Didot 1855 Essai sur l'inégalité des Races humaines Paris Firmin-Didot 2 1884 Online edition at Wikisource Essai sur l'inégalité des Races humaines Paris Firmin-Didot 6 1933 Essai sur l'inégalité des Races humaines Paris Pierre Belfond 1967 German editions (translation by Ludwig Schemann) Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen 1897 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann Four volumes. Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Erster Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann https://archive.org/details/versuchberdieu01gobi/page/n6/mode/1up Online 2025-07-22 Internet Archive https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiuo.ark:/13960/t5t72bj41&seq=7 Online 2025-07-22 HathiTrust Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiuo.ark:/13960/t43r0sw2j&seq=7 Online 2025-07-22 HathiTrust Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiuo.ark:/13960/t4vh5gj2n&seq=7 Online 2025-07-22 HathiTrust Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Vierter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiuo.ark:/13960/t5v69cf37&seq=7 Online 2025-07-22 HathiTrust English editions The English translations listed here include only Volume 1 of the four-volume work. The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Race 1856 Translation by Henry Hotze. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37115/37115-h/37115-h.htm Online 2025-10-03 Project Gutenberg https://archive.org/details/moralintellectua00gobi/page/n7/mode/2up Online 2025-10-03 Internet Archive The Inequality of Human Races 1915 London William Heinemann Translation by Adrian Collins. Online (Wikisource) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/69751/69751-h/69751-h.htm Online 2025-07-22 Project Gutenberg https://archive.org/details/inequalityofhuma00gobi Online 2025-07-22 Internet Archive References Category:Book:Scientific racism in Germany