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. 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. The Passing of the Great Race - Google Books 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 In such efforts we encounter social conditions over which we have as yet no control. The Passing of the Great Race: Or the Racial Basis of E 5 available. "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be will be utterly submerged. Despite Boass objections, many scientists praised The Passing of the Great Race, particularly for its value in communicating racial science to the public. Winston, Andrew S. "The Passing of the Great Race" in, Woods, Frederick Adams. In The Passing of the Great Race, Grant calls on the US to enact an extensive eugenics program. As soon as the true bearing and import of the facts are appreciated by lawmakers a complete change in our political structure will inevitably occur and our present reliance on the influence of education will be superseded by a readjustment based on racial values. As a result, Grant believes that democracies that average people run are less efficient than aristocracies ruled by men qualified by noble birth. 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. 5 (Nov., 1916), pp. Hereditarianism ran counter to the belief in education, hard work, and "pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps.". 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. 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. 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. bbbb. "The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant. 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. 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. As the vice president of the Immigration Restriction League, Grant argued that immigration quotas at the time needed to be reduced. This book remains a compelling argument for the defense of unique racial identities in opposition to the homogenization being promoted by liberalism and multiculturalism" - John Morgan, Arktos Media. Galton and other proponents of eugenics advocated to restrict reproduction to improve the human species through selective breeding. purports to show that the consequence of this subversion was evident in the decreasing quality of life, lower birth rates, and corruption of the contemporary American society. In contrast, Grant claims that Nordics are superior soldiers, sailors, and explorers, but above all, they are skillful leaders. The native Americans [American Nordics] are splendid raw material, but have as yet only an imperfectly developed national consciousness. 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. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. In the introduction to the fourth edition published in 1921, Grant states that his original purpose for writing The Passing of the Great Race, making Americans aware of his race concept and the alleged need for segregation, had been accomplished because the books publication encouraged the US to adopt restrictive immigration laws. Grant's book and the genre in general were read in Germany, but eugenicists increasingly turned to Nazi Germany for leadership. According to historian Charles C. Alexander writing for the journal Phylon in 1962: There was nothing very new about The Passing of the Great Race; Grant's views were essentially a reiteration of the earlier racial polemics of the Comte de Gobineau in France and Houston Stewart Chamberlain in Germany. 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. Grant explicitly states that the laws of nature require the obliteration of people he classifies as unfit, or not genetically strong enough to survive without assistance. "Whether or not one agrees with his theories, Madison Grant's work continues to remind us of the genuine, time-less issues at stake beneath the day-to-day political rhetoric of our times. 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. He was also a member of two anti-immigration lobbying groups, the American Defense Society and the Immigration Restriction League. The Passing of the Great Race: Or, the Racial Basis of European History Document - Excerpt from Madison Grant, The Passing of Great Race (1916 In the chapter "The Physical Basis of Race," Grant explains his now-disproven claims that race is based in biology. The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history Our grandfathers threw away this opportunity in the blissful ignorance of national childhood and inexperience. 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. "Reviewed Work(s): The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History by Madison Grant. 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 RACE - Madison Grant - AUTOGRAPHED (Revised Ed "[4] Grant categorized the Alpines as being the lowest of the three European races, with the Nordics as the pinnacle of civilization. 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." It's that he has no *coherent, rational* models to knit everything together, other than his obviously deeply felt prejudices, in all senses of that word. The "Proto-Nordic" human, Grant reasoned, probably evolved in "forests and plains of eastern Germany, Poland and Russia" (p.170). It is destructive of the best strains, spiritually, morally and physically. The Passing of The Great Race; or, The Racial Basis of European History is a 1916 book by the American lawyer and conservationist Madison Grant. Gratis verzending vanaf 20,- Gratis afhalen in de winkel The first two chapters, "Introduction" and "Race and Democracy," criticize American democracy. A weird mixture of phrenology, social Darwinism, and anthropology for the sole purpose of establishing the superiority of the "Nordic" race and justification of eugenics in maintaining the purity of races. 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. If you enjoy the works of Lothrop Stoddard and/or Hans F. K. Gnther, you will love "The Passing of the Great Race.". 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. Blond hair also comes everywhere from the Nordic subspecies and from nowhere else. Grant complains that recent immigrants to the US are not the strong Nordics who dominated earlier centuries, but are, as he calls them, social discards and weak refugees fleeing persecution. 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. 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 result is a total lack of continuity of purpose, an intermittent intellect goaded into spasmodic outbursts of energy. "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. They lack the instinct of self-preservation in a racial sense. The Hindu to-day speaks a very ancient form of Aryan language, but there remains not one recognizable trace of the blood of the white conquerors who poured in through the passes of the Northwest. 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. The Passing Of The Great Race(1917) - Internet Archive The high tide of the Mongol invasion was during the thirteenth century. 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. 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 consequence of this change our immigrants now largely represent lowly refugees from "persecution," and other social discards. 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. "Reviewed Work(s): The Passing of the Great Race: Or the Racial Basis of European History by Madison Grant. During Grant's long career as a conservationist he was pivotal in protecting many different species of animals through his environmental and philanthropic organizations. It is, therefore, the Homo europaeus, the white man par excellence. Publication date 1917 Topics C-DAC Collection digitallibraryindia; JaiGyan Language English. Such a despot had an enormous power at his disposal which, if he were benevolent or even intelligent, could be used and most frequently was used for the general uplift of the race. Madison Grant (Grant, Madison, 1865-1937) | The Online Books Page 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. Part two of the book, "European Races in History," attempts to demonstrate that history and human progress can be explained entirely in terms of race. 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. [8], By 1937, the book sold 17,000 copies in the U.S. 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. 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. Date 1916 1916) (25 January 2006 (according to Exifdata)) Source His fantastical theories espouse the idea that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human beings. 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. As measured in terms of centuries these characters are fixed and rigid and the only benefit to be derived from a changed environment and better food conditions is the opportunity afforded a race which has lived under adverse conditions to achieve its maximum development but the limits of that development are fixed for it by heredity and not by environment. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race. 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. The serpent's tail, in human society represented by the antisocial forces, was in the past dragged by sheer strength along the path of progress. DescriptionPassing of the Great Race - Map 4.jpg "Present Distribution of the European Races", map from American eugenicist Madison Grant's1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race. on the Internet. "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 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 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". 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. "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. And it's not even the book's startling fundamental premise - that race grounds culture, religion, and the state (and not the other way around.) 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. However, they still maintained that the book held value due to Grants ability to synthesize the arguments of earlier eugenics works in an accessible and concise way. Critics warned that Grant used uncritical circular reasoning. The passing of the great race (1922 edition) | Open Library The monkey people are funny looking. His analysis of population studies, economic utility factors, labor supply, etc. The Passing of the Great Race Or the Racial Basis of European History was written by Madison Grant, American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist. I do recommend looking into modern day research on this topic. The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history. 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. 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'. Ignorance of English grammar or classic learning must not, forsooth, be held up as a reproach to the political or social aspirant. 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. 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. The book elaborates Grant's interpretation of contemporary anthropology and history, which he sees as revolving chiefly around "race" rather than environment. 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 - Google Books The Passing Of The Great Race : Madison Grant - Internet Archive It is well-nigh impossible to publish in the American newspapers any reflection upon certain religions or races which are hysterically sensitive even when mentioned by name. Madison Grant | American lawyer | Britannica It really deserves one star for it's completely irrational and misguided claims about racial taxonomies, its pseudo-science and its historical inaccuracies. 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. This page was last edited on 3 March 2023, at 11:35. In the crossing of the blond and brunet elements of a population, the more deeply rooted and ancient dark traits are prepotent or dominant. Aboriginal population 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 fact that the blood shows as "blue" through the fair Nordic skin is also to be taken into account. The American sold his birthright in a continent to solve a labor problem. Following the publication of The Passing of the Great Race, Grant took an active role in many influential eugenics organizations in the US, including the Eugenics Research Association, The Galton Society for the Study of the Origin and Evolution of Man, the American Eugenics Society, and the International Commission on Eugenics. 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. 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. 354-360 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 . that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. Grant feels that certain parts of Europe were underdeveloped and a source of racial stocks unqualified for the Nordic political structure of the U.S. Grant is also interested in the impact of the expansion of the U.S. Black population into the urban areas of the North. Condition: Brand new. I read this more because I heard it was the book that most influenced Hitler and I was wondering what would influence him. 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. 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.