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. Grant argues that the Alpines are best suited as agricultural peasants, whereas Mediterraneans are superior in art and other intellectual pursuits. The fact that the blood shows as "blue" through the fair Nordic skin is also to be taken into account. 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 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. Some of the earliest cases of racial passing come from descendants of mulatto slaves trying to escape from their enslavement. "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. 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. My favorite personally is his cover for the 2012 edition of Madison Grant's The Passing of The Great Race, with a foreword by none other than Jared Taylor, with his name printed on the front cover. 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. The result would be the submergence of the indigenous Nordic races under a corrupt and enfeebled system dominated by inferior races. It forms the substratum of the population of Greece and of the eastern coast of the Balkan Peninsula.")[5]. He supposes the existence of events and contacts and movements without support, neglects the facts that contradict his models, and emphasises beyond all reason heredity over environment (as racists do). The list of venues that no longer host organized races is countless. Along with Lothrop Stoddard, Grant was probably the single most influential creator of the national mood that made possible the immigration control measures of 1924. This new edition supercedes all others in many respects. In the field of art its superiority to both the other European races is unquestioned. Grant, Madison, 1865-1937: The passing of the great race : or, The racial basis of European history / (New York : C. Scribner's sons, 1924), also by Henry Fairchild Osborn (page images at HathiTrust) Grant, Madison, 1865-1937: Report of the Bronx parkway commission, appointed under chapter 669 of the laws of 1906. 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. The Immigration Act of 1924 is often cited as just one step in a long history of racist immigration policy in the US. The fact that this sort of pseudoscience still informs some peoples opinions today is pathetic. The moral tendency of the heredity interpretation of history is for our day and generation and is in strong accord with the true spirit of the modern eugenics movement in relation to patriotism, namely, the conservation and multiplication for our country of the best spiritual, moral, intellectual and physical forces of heredity; thus only will the integrity of our institutions be maintained in the future. 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. "[1], "Madison Grant (1865 - 1937) was an American lawyer, historian, physical anthropologist, conservationist, and eugenicist. Published by Good Press. What's that you say? In addition to Galtons eugenics works, Grant drew from earlier attempts to classify humans into hierarchies according to race. 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. I do recommend looking into modern day research on this topic. Abroad, conditions are fully as bad, and we have the authority of one of the most eminent anthropologists in France that the collection of anthropological measurements and data among French recruits at the outbreak of the Great War was prevented by Jewish influence, which aimed to suppress any suggestion of racial differentiation in France. Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. The causal way in which he makes sweeping conclusions about the need to control populations in favor of "the Great Race" is truly scary. The publisher marketed The Passing of the Great Race as a scientific book, but according to a review by Frederick Adams Woods, Grant intentionally wrote the book without any footnotes or in-text citations to make it more accessible and interesting to the public. 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". He called the first positive eugenics, which encouraged people he considered superior to have more children. The Passing of the Great Race; or, The Racial Bias of European History Madison Grant Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916. 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. He also assisted in the passing and prosecution of several anti-miscegenation laws, notably the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 in the state of Virginia, where he sought to codify his particular version of the "one-drop rule" into law. 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 unfortunate fact that nearly all species of men interbreed freely leaves us no choice in the matter. May 14, 2019. The second chapter, "Paleolithic Man," draws directly from Henry Fairfield Osborns Men of the Old Stone Age. ", Peake, H.J.E. Uploaded by In our Southern States Jim Crow cars and social discriminations have exactly the same purpose and justification. His desirable characteristics of a people "family life, loyalty, and truth" were claimed to be exclusive products of the "Nordic race". 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. Part one, "Race, Language, and Nationality," is composed of seven chapters that detail Grants racial theories and advocate for eugenics programs such as forced sterilization and strict laws against marriage between people of different races. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. The Romans died out but the slaves survived and their descendants form the great majority of the south Italians of to-day. Madison Grant's prejudices and bigotry compiled into one volume, "The Passing of the Great Race" was his justification for eugenics and racism. Bestel The Passing of the Great Race van Madison Grant Voor 23:00 besteld, morgen in huis! He understood that race and culture are inseparable, since the latter can only take root in the former. Terms of Service (last updated 12/31/2014). They lack the instinct of self-preservation in a racial sense. 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. History, Art & Archives, United State House of Representatives. 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. He primarily focuses on the Nordic race, its characteristics, and how it has fell from dominance in Europe. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved.". 4Th rev. Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute. 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. Boas and his students were strongly opposed to racialist notions, holding that any perceived racial inequality was from social rather than biological factors. In America, also, strange temples, which would have been abhorrent to our Colonial ancestors, are multiplying and our streets and parks are turned over to monuments to foreign "patriots," designed not to please the artistic sense of the passer-by but to gratify the national preference of some alien element in the electorate. Tripe. by Grant, Madison 0 Ratings 3 Want to read 1 Currently reading 0 Have read Overview View 10 Editions Details Reviews Lists Related Books Publish Date 1922 Publisher Scribner Pages [12] Versions of their debates on the relative influence of biological and social factors persist in contemporary anthropology. 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. ", Alexander, Charles C. "Prophet of American Racism: Madison Grant and the Nordic Myth. The theory and the book were praised by Adolf Hitler and other Nazis, so much so that the it was the first foreign book published by the Nazis[clarification needed] after they came to power.[3]. 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. 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. 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. ", Aranda, Elizabeth and Elizabeth Vaquera. The seventh through eleventh chapters detail the origins and expansion of the Nordics. "The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant. On The Discursive Construction Of Jewish "Racialization" And "Race Passing:" Jews As "U-boats" With A Mysterious "Queer Light". 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'. 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. US Senator David Reed co-sponsored the act, so it is also called the Johnson-Reed Act. She is concerned only with the perpetuation of the species or type and heredity alone is the medium through which she acts. "The Biological Racial State: Nazi Racial Hygiene, 19331939." Want to Read. 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. To utilize and adapt to human needs the forces and the raw materials of nature, to invent new processes, to establish new principles, and to elucidate and unravel the laws that control the universe call for genius. "Reviewed Work(s): The Passing of the Great Race: Or the Racial Basis of European History by Madison Grant. In the US, Grants and other eugenicists vision of negative eugenics was enacted through state laws like the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 that allowed state institutions, such as prisons and asylums for people with mental illnesses, to sterilize people without their consent. with a documentary supplement / with prefaces by Henry Fairfield Osborn. The act was not overturned until the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. 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. Both of these races are, therefore, western extensions of Asiatic subspecies and neither of them can be considered as exclusively European. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Holocaust Encyclopedia. Efforts to increase the birth rate of the genius producing classes of the community, while most desirable, encounter great difficulties. The country villages and the farms are the nurseries of nations, while cities are consumers and seldom producers of men. Publication date 1917 Topics C-DAC Collection digitallibraryindia; JaiGyan Language English. Grant criticizes charities and philanthropists for intervening in natural selection through their efforts to assist the less fortunate. Grant, while aware of the "Nordic Migration Theory" into the Mediterranean, appears to reject this theory as an explanation for the high civilization features of the Greco-Roman world. I read this more because I heard it was the book that most influenced Hitler and I was wondering what would influence him. These children were often fathered by their white masters, which led to their fair skin and resemblance to other white children. 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. 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. 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. ed., with a documentary supplement, with prefaces by Henry Fairfield Osborn by Grant, Madison, 1865-1937; Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 1857-1935 Publication date 1922 Topics Ethnology -- Europe Publisher New York Scribner Collection robarts; toronto Digitizing sponsor msn When individuals of perfect blond type occur, as sometimes in Greek islands, we may suspect a recent visit of sailors from a passing ship but when only single characters remain spread thinly, but widely, over considerable areas, like the blondness of the Atlas Berbers or of the Albanian mountaineers, we must search in the dim past for the origin of these blurred traits of early invaders. As of 2021, it has since been proven that all humans belong to the same species according to the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, or AAPA. 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. Grant was a lawyer and wildlife conservationist in New York City who helped found eugenics organizations in the US during the early twentieth century. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. The monkey people are funny looking. By Terry Gross. 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. 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. In the brief chapter "Racial Aptitudes," Grant claims that people largely inherit moral, intellectual, and spiritual traits, which results in different racial aptitudes. ", Woods, Frederick Adams. Get help and learn more about the design. In such efforts we encounter social conditions over which we have as yet no control. 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. The remainder of the book is divided into two parts. The American sold his birthright in a continent to solve a labor problem. ", Bledstein, Burton J. ", G.H.B. 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. His most renowned work, The Passing of the Great Race: or the Racial Basis of European History (1916), argued for the preservation of America as a 'civilization preserve' for the Nordic race, advocating for immigration only from the founding stock of Anglo-Saxons and other Nordics from north-western Europe. The latter is occurring to-day in many parts of America, especially in New England. 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. Races must be kept apart by artificial devices of this sort or they ultimately amalgamate and in the offspring the more generalized or lower type prevails. This purpose has been accomplished thoroughly, and one of the most far-reaching effects of . Hitler quotes Grants book in his speeches and even sent Grant a letter where he referred to it as his Bible. To what extent the Mediterranean race entered into the blood and civilization of Rome, it is now difficult to say, but the traditions of the Eternal City, its love of organization, of law and military efficiency, as well as the Roman ideals of family life, loyalty, and truth, point clearly to a Nordic rather than to a Mediterranean origin. His fantastical theories espouse the idea that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human beings. Grant is also deeply opposed to the prospect of Black Americans obtaining any semblance of equality, for he states that they are only valuable so long as they are subservient to Whites. The Passing of the Great Race helped legitimize concepts of biological race and encouraged scientific racism in the US. In America we find another close parallel in the Civil War and the subsequent granting of citizenship to Negroes and to ever increasing numbers of immigrants of plebeian, servile or Oriental races, who throughout history have shown little capacity to create, organize or even to comprehend Republican institutions. [6] 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 section of any community that produces leaders or genius of any sort is only a minute percentage. "AAPA Statement on Race and Racism. 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." When the Nazi regime took control of Germany in 1933, Germany passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, which permitted the Nazi Regime to sterilize an estimated 400,000 people against their will according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He can breed from the best or he can eliminate the worst by segregation or sterilization. Particularly striking about Grant is his lack of originalityhis skill at reproducing as his own the conventional wisdom of white supremacy. Grant expounds a theory of Nordic superiority, claiming that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human "races". 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. Machines may be able to crunch number and analyze data, but they can't match the human touch when it come to customer service, teamwork, and collaboration. 354-360 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. Department of Sociology, University of South Florida. According to reviews of the early editions, the publication of The Passing of the Great Race caused a sensation and instigated debate in the academic and public spheres. Grant viewed the immigration into the US of different groups as not beneficial. He was also a member of two anti-immigration lobbying groups, the American Defense Society and the Immigration Restriction League. . Part two, "European Races in History," contains fourteen chapters that trace the prehistory of Europe, outline the purported differences between the three European races that Grant claims exist, and detail the origin and achievements of the allegedly superior Nordic race. Grant demonstrated his eclecticism by taking the Anglo-Saxon tradition, borrowing a bit of racial philosophy from one writer, a bit from another, and weaving together a comprehensive view of history. The German translation of The Passing of the Great Race also influenced the eugenics programs and genocide that Hitler and Nazi Germany committed. Stephen Jay Gould described The Passing of the Great Race as " the most influential tract of American scientific racism "[11], Grant was involved in many debates on the discipline of anthropology against the anthropologist Franz Boas, who advocated cultural anthropology in contrast to Grant's "hereditarian" branch of physical anthropology. Book Source: Digital Library of India Item 2015.527634. dc.contributor.author: Madison Grant dc.date.accessioned: 2015-10-01T21:01:28Z It may be latent through several generations of obscurity and then flare up when the opportunity comes. The small Colonial population of America was, on an average and man for man, far superior to the present inhabitants, although the latter are twenty-five times more numerous. In turn, this corruption of society would lead to the subjection of the Nordic community to "inferior" races who would in turn long to be dominated and instructed by "superior" ones utilizing authoritarian powers. According to Grant, democratic ideals wrongly assume that environmental factors such as education affect human development and achievement rather than heredity. 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.
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what is the passing of the great race