what is the passing of the great race what is the passing of the great 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. 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. 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. In most cases the blood of pioneers has been lost to their race. Such leaders have always been a minute fraction of the whole, but as long as the tradition of their predominance persisted they were able to use the brute strength of the unthinking herd as part of their own force and were able to direct at will the blind dynamic impulse of the slaves, peasants or lower classes. 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. 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. 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". Instead, what strikes me is that Grant stood steadfastly and openly as an Anglo-Saxon willing and ready to defend his people, culture and class. 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. Some of the earliest cases of racial passing come from descendants of mulatto slaves trying to escape from their enslavement. The defense presented The Passing of the Great Race as evidence to argue that many Nazi eugenics programs were inspired by policies in the US and therefore it was hypocritical for the US to try them for successfully enacting their own ideas. 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. 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. By allowing only people who they believed to be of good stock to have children, eugenicists claimed that governments could eradicate disease and disability and curb overpopulation. Boas characterized The Passing of the Great Race as dangerous, dogmatic, inconsistent, and built on observations selected to justify Grants own prejudice. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. 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. 4Th rev. Democratic theories of government in their modern form are based on dogmas of equality formulated some hundred and fifty years ago and rest upon the assumption that environment and not heredity is the controlling factor in human development. "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. The seventh through eleventh chapters detail the origins and expansion of the Nordics. In contrast, Grant claims that Nordics are superior soldiers, sailors, and explorers, but above all, they are skillful leaders. on the Internet. 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. 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. 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. Boas critiqued Grants misconceptions about heredity, such as his assumption that physical traits such as skin color operated according to simple Mendelian genetics, as well as his refusal to consider the effect of environment on physical traits used for racial classification. 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. Such an admission we can hardly expect from those of inferior races. Hardcover, 150 pages. "AAPA Statement on Race and Racism. The Passing of the Great Race; or, The Racial Bias of European History Madison Grant Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916. 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. 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. 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). 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. From barely-used Formula 1 circuits to shuttered . War is in the highest sense dysgenic rather than eugenic. 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. The passing of the great race: or, The racial basis of European history. 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. Grant is confident that the American public would agree to sterilize ten percent of the population, beginning with those he calls defectives, including criminals and people with diseases and mental illnesses. Grant helped draft the Immigration Act of 1924 that Johnson authored, which established strict quotas for immigration based on nationality. Here we have a selected list of quotes and excerpts that should serve as a nice summary for the entire book. They lack the instinct of self-preservation in a racial sense. These races vary intellectually and morally just as they do physically. The passing of the great race or, The racial basis of European history. ed. 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. Then, if the strain survives, it is by the slow reversion to one of the parent types - almost inevitably the lower. 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. But I bumped it up a little for its historical and philosophical significance because from those perspectives it's really fascinating - if horrifying - to read about how people actually thought about race a hundred years ago and more. History 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 northern Europeans, or Nordics, are biologically and culturally superior to the rest of humanity. 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). Department of Sociology, University of South Florida. This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types. In fact, the primary achievement of this arcane, humorless book may be simply that it was so influential despite borrowing so heavily from other writers whose work Grant digested. In consequence of this change our immigrants now largely represent lowly refugees from "persecution," and other social discards. The book received positive reviews in the 1920s, but Grant's popularity declined in the 1930s. For 200 years the Spanish infantry had no equal in Europe but this distinction disappeared with the opening decades of the seventeenth century. 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. [15], The book continued to influence the white supremacist movement in the United States in the early 21st century. The preface of the book is written by Jared Taylor, editor of the magazine American Renaissance, among other positions. 5 (Nov., 1916), pp. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. "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." The Passing of the Great Race is an article from Geographical Review, Volume 2. The result would be the submergence of the indigenous Nordic races under a corrupt and enfeebled system dominated by inferior races. The Alpine, the Mediterranean and the Nordic, which enter into the composition of European populations of to-day and in various combinations comprise the great bulk of white men all over the world. The causal way in which he makes sweeping conclusions about the need to control populations in favor of "the Great Race" is truly scary. A fantastically "just-so" book: things are ordered exactly as Grant wishes them to be, he just makes up whatever conditions he needs to knit things together. Ernest Hemingway might also have alluded to The Passing of the Great Race in the subtitle of his book The Torrents of Spring; A Romantic Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great 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. Cohen, Adam. 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. 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. 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. 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. A majority must of necessity be inferior to a picked minority and it always resents specializations in which it cannot share. 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 What's that you say? 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. According to Spiro, German anthropologists involved in the passage of the law were influenced by Grants advocacy for forced sterilizations that he put forth in his book. What gave the book particular significance was the boldness and sweep of the treatment. The native Americans [American Nordics] are splendid raw material, but have as yet only an imperfectly developed national consciousness. "[1], "Madison Grant (1865 - 1937) was an American lawyer, historian, physical anthropologist, conservationist, and eugenicist. History, Art & Archives, United State House of Representatives. Below is the story of Ellen and William Craft, a married couple who escaped . The unfortunate fact that nearly all species of men interbreed freely leaves us no choice in the matter. "U.S. Immigration Timeline." [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. 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. "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. History. 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. The tendency in a democracy is toward a standardization of type and a diminution of the influence of genius. The first edition, published in 1916, included a preface authored by Osborn, the president of the American Museum of Natural History at the time. "Elizabeth Aranda." 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." He understood that race and culture are inseparable, since the latter can only take root in the former. 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. The fact that the blood shows as "blue" through the fair Nordic skin is also to be taken into account. If the Melting Pot is allowed to boil without control and we continue to follow our national motto and deliberately blind ourselves to all "distinctions of race, creed or color," the type of native American of Colonial descent will become as extinct as the Athenian of the age of Pericles, and the Viking of the days of Rollo. "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be will be utterly submerged. Moral, intellectual and spiritual attributes are as persistent as physical characters and are transmitted substantially unchanged from generation to generation. The Immigration Act of 1924 is often cited as just one step in a long history of racist immigration policy in the US. The coast of Finland is as a result Swedish and the natives of the interior have distinctly Nordic characters with the exception of the skull, which in its roundness shows an Alpine cross. 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. Critics warned that Grant used uncritical circular reasoning. 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. 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. Grant reasons that the new immigrants were of different races and were creating separate societies within America including ethnic lobby groups, criminal syndicates, and political machines which were undermining the socio-political structure of the country and in turn the traditional Anglo-Saxon colonial stocks, as well as all Nordic stocks. 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. 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. ", Gidley, M. "Notes on F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Passing of the Great Race. 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. If you enjoy the works of Lothrop Stoddard and/or Hans F. K. Gnther, you will love "The Passing of the Great Race.". 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. In fact, it is said that practically every one of the Forty-Niners [people in search of gold] in California was of Nordic type. The book is mostly based on obsolete evolutionary and genetic concepts (hereditary mental and physical characteristics preserved through copulation in the same racial groups ) and a rather chaotic description of cultural influences through the history of mankind. The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history. These inferior races and classes are prompt to recognize in such an admission the very real danger to themselves of being relegated again to their former obscurity and subordinate position in society. 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 present, with an emphasis on the need to preserve the northern European type and generally improve the racefor Grant was, logically, a proponent of eugenics. 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. Such has been the organization of mankind from the beginning, and such it still is in older communities than ours. He also criticizes egalitarian and democratic ideals surrounding equality in the US that he thinks intervene in natural selection, allowing so-called inferior races to proliferate at the expense of superior races. (Grant wrote the introduction to Stoddard's book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy.) 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. "Reviewed Work(s): The Passing of the Great Race: Or the Racial Basis of European History by Madison Grant. At the beginning the Empire was clothed in the garb of republicanism in deference to such Roman elements as still persisted in the Senate and among the Patricians but ultimately these external forms were discarded and the state became virtually a pure despotism. The first half is Grant describing categories based on physical traits, with Nordic and Teutonic races superior, followed by Alpine and Mediterranean, then Baltic and Slav, and negroes the lowest. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved.". In a 1923 summary of book reviews on The Passing of the Great Race, Woods observed that the book was popular among the general public and favorably reviewed in scientific journals such as Science, though there were some unfavorable reviews. "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. Among those who embraced the book and its message was Adolf Hitler, who wrote to Grant to personally thank him for writing it, referring to the book as "my Bible."[9]. This, however, is at present a counsel of perfection and we must face conditions as they are. "[4] Grant categorized the Alpines as being the lowest of the three European races, with the Nordics as the pinnacle of civilization. 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. 4 payments of AU $20.14 with Afterpay. 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.". 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. 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. Nascar Race Hub analysts Chad Knaus and Aric Almirola discussed the possibilities of Kyle Busch's chances of passing the late great Dale Earnhardt 76 career cup series win. 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. 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. US Senator David Reed co-sponsored the act, so it is also called the Johnson-Reed Act. The remainder of the book is divided into two parts. [citation needed], Grant became a part of popular culture in 1920s America. 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. Grant criticizes charities and philanthropists for intervening in natural selection through their efforts to assist the less fortunate. Probably the greatest anthropological examination of European racial history. Outdated, full of Nordic Rassenkunde, but somehow appealing within its mythology. "Whose Country is This? "Dr. Elizabeth Vaquera." 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.