He primarily focuses on the Nordic race, its characteristics, and how it has fell from dominance in Europe. 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. 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. 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. What's that you say? Grant expounds a theory of Nordic superiority, claiming that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human "races". He called the first positive eugenics, which encouraged people he considered superior to have more children. 4th rev. The Passing of the Great Race (1916) is his most famous work"[2]. The Passing of the Great Race helped legitimize concepts of biological race and encouraged scientific racism in the US. The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History Madison Grant C. Scribner's sons, 1922 - Caucasian race - 476 pages 1 Review Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks. Immigration during the First World War declined because ships were allocated to the war effort. The high tide of the Mongol invasion was during the thirteenth century. Chivalry and knighthood, and their still surviving but greatly impaired counterparts, are peculiarly Nordic traits, and feudalism, class distinctions, and race pride among Europeans are traceable for the most part to the north. An amazing book and should be read by all especially white teenagers and young adults. Grant also supports eugenics, advocating the sterilization of "undesirables", a treatment possibly to be extended to "types which may be called weaklings" and "perhaps ultimately to worthless race types": A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfitin other words social failureswould solve the whole question in one hundred years, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums. 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. Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. ", Gidley, M. "Notes on F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Passing of the Great Race. They either died childless or left half breeds behind them. 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. 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. 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. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for THE PASSING OF THE GREAT RACE - Madison Grant - AUTOGRAPHED (Revised Ed., 1918) at the best online prices at eBay! The first section deals with the basis of race as well as Grant's own stances on political issues of the day (eugenics). The "Proto-Nordic" human, Grant reasoned, probably evolved in "forests and plains of eastern Germany, Poland and Russia" (p.170). 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 proportion of men of pure type of each constituent race to the mixed type is also a powerful factor. (Grant wrote the introduction to Stoddard's book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy.) The second chapter, "Paleolithic Man," draws directly from Henry Fairfield Osborns Men of the Old Stone Age. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved.". Grant was a lawyer and wildlife conservationist in New York City who helped found eugenics organizations in the US during the early twentieth century. The Immigration Act of 1924 is often cited as just one step in a long history of racist immigration policy in the US. 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. This is a must-have book for anyone who supports white supremacy, eugenics, and racism. For 200 years the Spanish infantry had no equal in Europe but this distinction disappeared with the opening decades of the seventeenth century. The tendency in a democracy is toward a standardization of type and a diminution of the influence of genius. 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 causal way in which he makes sweeping conclusions about the need to control populations in favor of "the Great Race" is truly scary. Denmark, Norway and Sweden are purely Nordic and yearly contribute swarms of a splendid type of immigrants to America and are now, as they have been for thousands of years, the chief nursery and broodland of the master race. War is in the highest sense dysgenic rather than eugenic. ", Alexander, Charles C. "Prophet of American Racism: Madison Grant and the Nordic Myth. In the age of Trump, Madison Grant's influential work of scientific racism takes on a new salience. Holocaust Encyclopedia. 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. The Nordics are, all over the world, a race of soldiers, sailors, adventurers, and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organizers, and aristocrats in sharp contrast to the essentially peasant character of the Alpines. 4th rev. In the field of art its superiority to both the other European races is unquestioned. Blond hair also comes everywhere from the Nordic subspecies and from nowhere else. From barely-used Formula 1 circuits to shuttered . Particularly striking about Grant is his lack of originalityhis skill at reproducing as his own the conventional wisdom of white supremacy. Get help and learn more about the design. 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. The good people of the heroic Nordic race, he cried, were always at risk of subversion by their darker-skinned inferiors, even in the land of Horatio Alger, where heredity, with enough sweat from ones brow, was not supposed to trump environment or self-determination. 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). During Grant's long career as a conservationist he was pivotal in protecting many different species of animals through his environmental and philanthropic organizations. more details. In such efforts we encounter social conditions over which we have as yet no control. 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. The message was anti-democratic and anti-Christian, which did not sit well with the patriotic public. The ideal in eugenics toward which statesmanship should be directed is, of course, improvement in quality rather than quantity. Galton and other proponents of eugenics advocated to restrict reproduction to improve the human species through selective breeding. 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. ed., with a documentary supplement, with prefaces by Henry Fairfield Osborn. The American sold his birthright in a continent to solve a labor problem. web pages The effort now being made in America to settle undesirable immigrants on farms may, from the viewpoint of race replacement, be more dangerous than allowing them to remain in crowded Ghettos or tenements. According to Spiro, the public debate inspired by the books publication contributed to the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 that restricted immigration to the US for forty years. 1923, C. Scribner's sons. 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. "Whose Country is This? Furthermore, Grant warns of the dangers of what he calls race suicide, where the superior Nordic race declines in population numbers through low birth rates and frequent wars, while inferior races grow in numbers by having more children and ultimately replace the allegedly superior races. He can breed from the best or he can eliminate the worst by segregation or sterilization. "U.S. Immigration Timeline." Historically, topically, and geographically, Grant's magnum opus covers a vast amount of ground, broadly tracing the racial basis of European history, emphasising the need . A second revised edition of the book published in 1918, followed by a third revised edition in 1920. In Rome, when this change in blood was substantially complete, the state could no longer be operated under Republican forms of government and the Empire arose to take its place. "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be will be utterly submerged. The fourth through sixth chapters draw freely from Ripley to describe the purported characteristics and geographic distribution of the Alpine, Mediterranean, and Nordic races. In most cases the blood of pioneers has been lost to their race. 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. Grant's book and the genre in general were read in Germany, but eugenicists increasingly turned to Nazi Germany for leadership. 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]. Published by Good Press. 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. 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. Grant criticizes charities and philanthropists for intervening in natural selection through their efforts to assist the less fortunate. 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. 5 (Nov., 1916), pp. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/adam-serwer-madison-grant-white-nationalism/583258/. In contrast, what Galton called negative eugenics programs attempt to prevent the reproduction of people eugenicists judged to be, to use Grants terms, defective and worthless. Chamberlains 1899 book Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century), written in Germany, built off of Gobineaus arguments to reaffirm that Aryans were superior to all other races and specifically denounce Jewish people as an inferior race. 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. Osborn was a paleontologist and president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and one of Grants closest friends. What gave the book particular significance was the boldness and sweep of the treatment. The work was categorised by the publisher as "science" and so never had a chance at mass popularity. Beginning in 1920, a series of congressional hearings was held to identify problems that immigrants were causing the United States. "Everybody ought to read it", the character explained. The book received positive reviews in the 1920s, but Grant's popularity declined in the 1930s. "White Nationalisms Deep American Roots.". The seventh through eleventh chapters detail the origins and expansion of the Nordics. Grant reasons that the United States has always been a Nordic country, consisting of Nordic immigrants from England, Scotland, and the Netherlands in Colonial times and of Nordic immigrants from Ireland and Germany in later times. US Senator David Reed co-sponsored the act, so it is also called the Johnson-Reed Act. [17], expansion of the U.S. Black population into the urban areas of the North, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, "Embryo Project Encyclopedia: The Passing of the Great Race; or The Racial Basis of European History (1916), by Madison Grant", "Prophet of American Racism: Madison Grant and the Nordic Myth", "A New Look at Old Data May Discredit a Theory on Race", "Overview of U.S. White Supremacist Groups", "Adam Serwer: White Nationalism's Deep American Roots", "Book Review: Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case Against Brown v. Board of Education", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Passing_of_the_Great_Race&oldid=1142611861. 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. "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. Rate this book. The fact that the blood shows as "blue" through the fair Nordic skin is also to be taken into account. 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. The underlying idea seems to be that if publication can be suppressed the facts themselves will ultimately disappear. Sweden, after sending forth her Goths and other early Teutonic tribes, turned her attention to the shores of the eastern Baltic, colonized the coast of Finland and the Baltic provinces and supplied also a strong Scandinavian element to the aristocracy of Russia. The book appeared when the anti-German propaganda machine was shifting into high gear, with images of German soldiers raping nuns and bombing cathedrals. 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 Census Bureau's projections, released today, estimate that minorities will be the majority by 2042, nearly a decade . Despite Boass objections, many scientists praised The Passing of the Great Race, particularly for its value in communicating racial science to the public. After seeing the alleged benefits of widespread sterilization, Grant predicts that the American people would willingly agree to sterilize ever-increasing proportions of the community, eventually moving on to those Grant labels as weaklings or worthless race types. He bade fare well to Christian and democratic values. Page 4 - In the city of New York, and elsewhere in the United States, there is a native American aristocracy resting upon layer after layer of immigrants of lower races, and the native American, while, of course, disclaiming the distinction of a patrician class, nevertheless has, up to this time, supplied the leaders of thought and the control of capital, of education, and of the religious . Condition: Brand new. 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. I read this more because I heard it was the book that most influenced Hitler and I was wondering what would influence him. anyone who doesnt believe that this book has been the basis for Western policy for the last 75 years either hasnt read it or hasnt turned their head from side to side and looked around. 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. 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. ", Fuentes, Agustn, Rebecca Rogers Ackermann, Sheela Athreya, Deborah Bolnick, Tina Lasisi, Sang-Hee Lee, Shay-Akil McLean, and Robin Nelson. 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. Date 1916 1916) (25 January 2006 (according to Exifdata)) Source His analysis of population studies, economic utility factors, labor supply, etc. "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. 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]. 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. 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." The Passing of the Great Race: The Racial Basis of European History (With Original 1916 Illustrations in Full Color) Published September 10th 2019 by Suzeteo Enterprises. According to the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, as of 2021, anthropologists know that no combination of physical traits can be used to reliably classify humans into racial groups because race represents social, not biological, categories. In part one, "Race, Language, and Nationality," Grant argues that democratic institutions that state that all humans are equal are dangerous. Terms of Service (last updated 12/31/2014). The first method was adopted by the Spartans, who had for their national ideals military efficiency and the virtues of self-control, and along these lines the results were completely successful. Even those rulers who most abused this power put down with merciless rigor the antisocial elements, such as pirates, brigands or anarchists, which impair the progress of a community, as disease or wounds cripple an individual. This importation of slaves and the ultimate extension of the Roman citizenship to their manumitted descendants and to inferior races throughout the growing Empire and the losses in internal and foreign wars, ruined the state. with a documentary supplement / with prefaces by Henry Fairfield Osborn. ", Serwer, Adam. 2, No. As a result, Grant believes that democracies that average people run are less efficient than aristocracies ruled by men qualified by noble birth. 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. 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". The essential character of all these racial mixtures is a lack of harmony - both physical and mental - in the first few generations. In the US, The Passing of the Great Race was praised by politicians, including former presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge, and cited as justification for laws that restricted immigration based on ethnicity and nationality. Whether we like to admit it or not, the result of the mixture of two races, in the long run, gives us a race reverting to the more ancient, generalized and lower type. It is scarcely necessary to cite the universal distrust, often contempt, that the half-breed between two sharply contrasted races inspires the world over. 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. 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. These races vary intellectually and morally just as they do physically. 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. 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. On the other hand, a member of a superior race in bad surroundings may, and very often does, sink to an extremely low level. Of course, after reading this, it was hard to really take anything he had to say seriously. Philanthropy and noble purpose dictated the doctrine expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the document which to-day constitutes the actual basis of American institutions. Dark colored eyes are all but universal among wild mammals and entirely so among the primates, man's nearest relatives. Coolidge, Calvin. 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. "Reviewed Work(s): The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History by Madison Grant. The first two chapters, "Introduction" and "Race and Democracy," criticize American democracy. 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. 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). 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. The preface of the book is written by Jared Taylor, editor of the magazine American Renaissance, among other positions. 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. "AAPA Statement on Race and Racism. And, secondly, great care has been placed on producing an aesthetically appealing volume, graphically and typographically, as befits a classic text ultimately arguing for quality rather than equality. [13], Grant advocated restricted immigration to the United States through limiting immigration from East Asia and Southern Europe; he also advocated efforts to purify the American population though selective breeding. In the Europe of to-day the amount of Nordic blood in each nation is a very fair measure of its strength in war and standing in civilization. In the brief chapter "Racial Aptitudes," Grant claims that people largely inherit moral, intellectual, and spiritual traits, which results in different racial aptitudes. If you enjoy the works of Lothrop Stoddard and/or Hans F. K. Gnther, you will love "The Passing of the Great Race.". Even after the statute was passed, Grant continued to be irked that even a smattering of non-Nordics were allowed to immigrate to the country each year. on the Internet. Price: AU $80.56. Many reviewers acknowledged a number of scientific flaws, and some recognized that few ideas presented in The Passing of the Great Race were novel. Grant asserts that people from Europe, Africa, and Asia represent different species of humans, while different races within Europe constitute subspecies, or populations with distinct characteristics. His desirable characteristics of a people "family life, loyalty, and truth" were claimed to be exclusive products of the "Nordic race". 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. Three hundred years later the great Muscovite expansion began, first over the steppes to the Urals and then across Siberian tundras and forests to the waters of the Pacific, taking up in its course much Mongolian blood, especially during the early stages of its advance. 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. Grant helped draft the Immigration Act of 1924 that Johnson authored, which established strict quotas for immigration based on nationality. 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. ", Peake, H.J.E. According to Elizabeth Aranda and Elizabeth Vaquera, who as of 2021, research sociology at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida, present day immigration policies in the US still reproduce racial inequalities and result in severe consequences for people of the demographics they target. "Elizabeth Aranda." In the chapter "The Physical Basis of Race," Grant explains his now-disproven claims that race is based in biology. 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. 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.