The Passing of the Great Race helped legitimize concepts of biological race and encouraged scientific racism in the US. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. [6] Where two distinct species are located side by side history and biology teach that but one of two things can happen; either one race drives the other out, as the Americans exterminated the Indians and as the Negroes are now replacing the whites in various parts of the South; or else they amalgamate and form a population of race bastards in which the lower type ultimately preponderates. The ideal in eugenics toward which statesmanship should be directed is, of course, improvement in quality rather than quantity. 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. 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. "Whose Country is This? 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. "Reviewed Work(s): The Passing of the Great Race: Or the Racial Basis of European History by Madison Grant. Grant was a lawyer and wildlife conservationist in New York City who helped found eugenics organizations in the US during the early twentieth century. [7] Thus, whenever such traits were found in a non-Nordic culture, Grant said that they were evidence of a Nordic influence or admixture, rather than casting doubt on their supposed exclusive Nordic origin. The Fhrer himself raved aboutThe Passing, calling it my Bible, and it was entered into evidence at the Nuremberg war crimes trials in defense of Hitlers personal physician to show that specifically American theories of white racial superiority supported the crimes against humanity with which he was chargedforced sterilization, for instance, or unnecessary and experimental surgery performed without anesthesia. Beginning in 1920, a series of congressional hearings was held to identify problems that immigrants were causing the United States. The latter is occurring to-day in many parts of America, especially in New England. He advocates for a significant expansion of laws that condemn the marriage of people of different races, and even goes so far as to argue that the birth of mixed-race people should be considered racial crimes. In consequence of this change our immigrants now largely represent lowly refugees from "persecution," and other social discards. Equality in their minds meant merely that they were just as good Englishmen as their brothers across the sea. 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 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. 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. 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. The passing of the great race or, The racial basis of European history. He bade fare well to Christian and democratic values. In the crossing of the blond and brunet elements of a population, the more deeply rooted and ancient dark traits are prepotent or dominant. Grant argued that negative eugenics was a more practical course of action to pursue in the US because he believed it would be much easier to identify and eradicate the people with the worst genetics than to select a group of people with the best genetics, and restrict the right to have children only to them. They either died childless or left half breeds behind them. By Terry Gross. 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 (18651937). 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. Francis Galton, the half-cousin of the naturalist Charles Darwin, first coined the term eugenics, Greek for "well-born," in 1883. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 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. Man has the choice of two methods of race improvement. 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). Some navigated below the depths, while others floated. What the Melting Pot actually does in practice can be seen in Mexico, where the absorption of the blood of the original Spanish conquerors by the native Indian population has produced the racial mixture which we call Mexican and which is now engaged in demonstrating its incapacity for self-government. "Reviewed Work(s): The Passing of the Great Race: Or the Racial Basis of European History by Madison Grant. 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. 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. Know your enemy. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved.". This light colored eye has appeared nowhere else on earth, is a specialization of this subspecies of man only and consequently is of extreme value in the classification of European races. 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. 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 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. Such an admission we can hardly expect from those of inferior races. The Romans died out but the slaves survived and their descendants form the great majority of the south Italians of to-day. 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. The male in his individual development indicates the direction in which the race is tending under the influence of variation and selection. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. 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. "The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant. 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. "Whether or not one agrees with his theories, Madison Grant's work continues to remind us of the genuine, time-less issues at stake beneath the day-to-day political rhetoric of our times. In the chapter "The Physical Basis of Race," Grant explains his now-disproven claims that race is based in biology. ", Woods, Frederick Adams. "Johnson, Albert." 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. 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 feels that certain parts of Europe were underdeveloped and a source of racial stocks unqualified for the Nordic political structure of the U.S. Grant is also interested in the impact of the expansion of the U.S. Black population into the urban areas of the North. 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. 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. ", Peake, H.J.E. His analysis of population studies, economic utility factors, labor supply, etc. 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. 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. 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. Emancipation. Hitler quotes Grants book in his speeches and even sent Grant a letter where he referred to it as his Bible. Other messages in his work include recommendations to install civil organizations through the public health system to establish quasi-dictatorships in their particular fields with the administrative powers to segregate unfavorable races in ghettos. 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. Dark colored eyes are all but universal among wild mammals and entirely so among the primates, man's nearest relatives. Eye color is of very great importance in race determination because all blue, gray or green eyes in the world to-day came originally from the same source, namely, the Nordic race of northern Europe. Galton described two dimensions of eugenics. This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. The passing of the great race: or, The racial basis of European history. 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 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." Using that data, Ripley classified Europeans into three distinct races, whom he called Teutonic, Alpine, and Mediterranean, based on features such as stature, eye color, and skull shape. 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. 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.
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