In The Passing of the Great Race, Grant calls on the US to enact an extensive eugenics program. With the proportional immigration law of 1924, the descendants of the founding Americans won a victory which would last 40 years, until senator Ted Kennedy after pressure from various special interest groups, especially Jewish groups, put this law out of effect with the new immigration laws of 1965 (see the book The Culture of Critique for a detailed description of this by Dr. Kevin MacDonald), but for a time this book (along with the works of his friend Lothrop Stoddard) helped set the national mood that helped secure the immigration restrictions of 1924. 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. "U.S. Immigration Timeline." As a result, Grant believes that democracies that average people run are less efficient than aristocracies ruled by men qualified by noble birth. Free shipping for many products! 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. Probably the greatest anthropological examination of European racial history. Blond hair also comes everywhere from the Nordic subspecies and from nowhere else. The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History is a 1916 book by American lawyer, self-styled anthropologist, and fan of the pseudo-science of eugenics, Madison Grant (1865-1937). A huge inspiration to me, although I cannot recommned it to other readers. 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. 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. Grant's book and the genre in general were read in Germany, but eugenicists increasingly turned to Nazi Germany for leadership. The mental characteristics of the Mediterranean race are well known, and this race, while inferior in bodily stamina to both the Nordic and the Alpine, is probably the superior of both, certainly of the Alpines, in intellectual attainments. 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. 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. 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. He called the first positive eugenics, which encouraged people he considered superior to have more children. Yet, while Grant allowed Mediterraneans to have abilities in art, as quoted above, later in the text in a sop to Nordic Migration Theorists, he remarked that true Mediterranean achievements were only through admixture with Nordics: This is the race that gave the world the great civilizations of Egypt, of Crete, of Phoenicia including Carthage, of Etruria and of Mycenean Greece. 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. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/adam-serwer-madison-grant-white-nationalism/583258/. 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. They either died childless or left half breeds behind them. The Passing of the Great Race : Grant, Madison - Internet Archive As long as this Gothic nobility controlled the Spanish states during the endless crusades against the Moors, Spain belonged to the Nordic kingdoms, but when their blood became impaired by losses in wars waged outside of Spain and in the conquest of the Americas, the sceptre fell from this noble race into the hands of the native Iberian, who had not the physical vigor or the intellectual strength to maintain the world empire built up by the stronger race. Throughout history it is only the race of the leaders that has counted and the most vigorous have been in control and will remain in mastery in one form or another until such time as democracy and its illegitimate offspring, socialism, definitely establish cacocracy [rule by the worst] and the rule of the worst and put an end to progress. Grant criticizes charities and philanthropists for intervening in natural selection through their efforts to assist the less fortunate. The words "that all men are created equal" have since been subtly falsified by adding the word "free," although no such expression is found in the original document and the teachings based on these altered words in the American public schools of to-day would startle and amaze the men who formulated the Declaration. The book received positive reviews in the 1920s, but Grant's popularity declined in the 1930s. 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 "Proto-Nordic" human, Grant reasoned, probably evolved in "forests and plains of eastern Germany, Poland and Russia" (p.170). 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. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. The book was originally published in 1916, but Wermod & Wermod Publishing Group have through their imprint The Palingenesis Project updated the text to modern standards by adding bibliographical data, index, explanatory footnotes and system of citation. 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. 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. [15], The book continued to influence the white supremacist movement in the United States in the early 21st century. 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. It is scarcely necessary to cite the universal distrust, often contempt, that the half-breed between two sharply contrasted races inspires the world over. Spiro (2009) explains its modest sales by five factors: Grant researched the published scientific literature, especially in anthropology, to support his notions of Nordic racialism. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald made a lightly disguised reference to Grant in The Great Gatsby. 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. 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. The underlying idea seems to be that if publication can be suppressed the facts themselves will ultimately disappear. In the brief chapter "Racial Aptitudes," Grant claims that people largely inherit moral, intellectual, and spiritual traits, which results in different racial aptitudes. 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. 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. 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. Our grandfathers threw away this opportunity in the blissful ignorance of national childhood and inexperience. 2016 marks a century since the publication ofThe 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. Of course, after reading this, it was hard to really take anything he had to say seriously. The act was not overturned until the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. 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." The Passing Of The Great Race(1917) by Madison Grant. Grant uses his hand-waving to order the "races" of the world, and big spoiler: the tall, fair people are on top, the short, dark people are on the bottom, and the middle is occupied by vast numbers of the "suspiciously swarthy". The proportion of men of pure type of each constituent race to the mixed type is also a powerful factor. 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. Grant's popular book The Passing of the Great Race combined social Darwinism, scientific racism, and the controversial principles of eugenics to argue that unrestricted immigration and racial mixing would ultimately undermine the superior racial classes and bring about a collapse of civilization in America. ed. The second chapter, "Paleolithic Man," draws directly from Henry Fairfield Osborns Men of the Old Stone Age. It is, therefore, the Homo europaeus, the white man par excellence. 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. The most primitive Aryan languages, namely, Lettish, Lithuanian and the recently extinct Old Prussian, are found in this neighborhood and here we are not far from the original Nordic homeland. 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. Grant expounds a theory of Nordic superiority, claiming that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human "races". This page was last edited on 3 March 2023, at 11:35. 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. 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. Uploaded by A supposedly scientific look at race by a man who otherwise did some great conversation work, helping to establish national parks, etc. xxviii "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. Condition: Brand new. The latter is occurring to-day in many parts of America, especially in New England. Published by Good Press. 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. more details. 1923, C. Scribner's sons. 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 really deserves one star for it's completely irrational and misguided claims about racial taxonomies, its pseudo-science and its historical inaccuracies. [8], By 1937, the book sold 17,000 copies in the U.S. Man has the choice of two methods of race improvement. It is everywhere characterized by certain unique specializations, namely, wavy brown or blond hair and blue, gray or light brown eyes, fair skin, high, narrow and straight nose, which are associated with great stature, and a long skull, as well as with abundant head and body hair. Equality in their minds meant merely that they were just as good Englishmen as their brothers across the sea. Americans turned against Grant's ideas in the 1930s; his book was no longer sold, and his supporters fell away. The Passing of the Great Race; or, The Racial Bias of European History Madison Grant Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916. The Passing of the Great Race was mentioned during the 1945 and 1946 Nuremberg Trials held in Nuremberg, Germany, that prosecuted Nazi leadership for war crimes committed during World War II. 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. The US Supreme Court did not overturn such laws, called anti-miscegenation laws, until the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. He served as the vice president of the Immigration Restriction League from 1922 to his death in 1937. "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. "The Great Technology Race: Who's Winning,Humans or Machines?" The fact that the blood shows as "blue" through the fair Nordic skin is also to be taken into account. ", Bledstein, Burton J. He was also a member of two anti-immigration lobbying groups, the American Defense Society and the Immigration Restriction League. View more articles from Geographical Review.View this article on JSTOR.View. 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 book elaborates Grant's interpretation of contemporary anthropology and history, which he sees as revolving chiefly around "race" rather than environment. The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of Eu