Arthur de Gobineau

Arthur Comte de Gobineau

Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (July 14, 1816 — October 13, 1882) was a French aristocrat, writer, diplomat, and social thinker, who became famous for advocating White Supremacy and developing the racist theory of the Aryan master race, in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855).

Life

Arthur de Gobineau was born in Ville-d'Avray, near Paris, France, into an aristocratic royalist family that cherished loyalty to the House of Bourbon. His father, Louis Gobineau, was an officer in the French army, and his mother, Anne-Louise Madeleine de Gercy, was of a Creole origin. When he was seven, his mother left her husband and fled with her lover and children to Switzerland, where young Gobineau attended the local gymnasium in Bienne. His mother tried to give him a solid Germanic and Germanophile education, and the schools in Switzerland were the ideal place for that.

In 1834, Gobineau returned to France to his father, and enrolled into general studies of the classics, folklore and oriental studies. He tried in 1835 to enroll into the military academy, but failed the entrance exam. Instead, he left for Paris and worked different manual jobs to make a living. Between 1840 and 1848, he published several works, including Mademoiselle Irnois. In 1846 he married Clémence Monnerot.

In February 1848 the revolution broke out, which ended the French monarchy. About the same time Alexis de Tocqueville, an aristocrat and a mentor of Gobineau, became French foreign minister. In 1949 de Tocqueville made Gobineau his private secretary, and later the main chief of the Cabinet. After that Gobineau became the first secretary in the embassy at Bern, and later he held posts in Hanover and Frankfurt.

Gobineau wrote his famous Essay on the Inequality of Human Races between 1853 and 1855. The book did not receive immediate attention, and passed rather unnoticed. In 1854, Gobineau became the first secretary in the embassy in Tehran, and later in 1861 the minister to Persia. There he wrote several works on Persian society.

In 1864 Gobineau served as French emissary to Athens, Greece, and in 1868 he moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to carry the same position. In Brazil he became a friend of the Brazilian emperor, Dom Pedro II. After Brazil, in 1872, Gobineau moved to Stockholm, Sweden, which was his last post. In 1876 he was forced to retire from the diplomatic corps.

Gobineau spent the rest of his career in Italy, writing novels and sculpting. Many of his works were published posthumously. In 1876 Gobineau met Richard Wagner in Rome, and visited him several times in his home in Bayreuth. Wagner was rather inspired by Gobineau's views and, together with his friends from the Bayreuth circle, helped him propagate his views. Gobineau's racial theories became popular in Germany after his death.

Gobineau spent his last days writing poetry and sculpting, two of his loves he always cherished. He died in Turin, Italy on October 13, 1882

Work

Gobineau published his famous Essay on the Inequality of Human Races in the period between 1853 and 1855, and dedicated it to the King George V of Hanover (1851-66). In it he expressed his views on the times he lived in and tried to explain the reasons behind revolutions. Gobineau was a royalist and despised democracy, holding that revolutions and wars are the result of the degeneration of society in general.

In the Inequality of Human Races Gobineau attempted to create a science of history, connecting the rise and fall of civilizations with race. He came to believe that race created culture, arguing that distinctions between the three "black", "white", and "yellow" races were natural barriers, and that "race-mixing" breaks those barriers and leads to chaos.

File:Asian Race Arthur de Gobineau Race Definitions.JPG This map shows the racial classification scheme of the anthropologist Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau.

White race Black race Yellow race Degenerative race

According to his definitions and the map shown here, the people of Spain, southern France, southern and western Iran, most of Italy, and a large part of Britain, consist of a degenerative race arising from miscegenation. Also he stated that the whole of north India consisted of a yellow race.

Gobineau believed that the "white" race was superior to the others. He thought it corresponds to the ancient Indo-European culture also known as "Aryan," Germany having just enough of the Aryan strain to revive the white race. For himself he believed be the descendant of Nordic Vikings.

Gobineau claimed that ethnicity was the most important question in history, and that the ethnic differences were permanent from the beginning of human history. Gobineau considered the Bible to be a reliable source of history. In the Inequality of Human Races he wrote that "Adam is the originator of our white species," and all other races were not part of human species. The biblical division into Hamites, Semites, and Japhetites, according to Gobineau, is a division within the white race.

In the last chapter of the Inequality of Human Races, Gobineau claimed that throughout human history there have been ten great civilizations, all of them started by the white race. Those civilizations were:

1. The Indian civilization - built by white Aryans.
2. The Egyptian civilization - founded by an Aryan branch from India.
3. The Assyrians - to which are attached other civilizations such as the Jewish and the Phoenician. According to Gobineau, these are Hamites and Semites. Gobineau places the Iranian civilizations here, but mentions that they are Aryans.
4. The Greeks - originally Aryans, but with Semitic elements.
5. The Chinese civilization - like the Egyptian founded by an Aryan colony from India.
6. The old civilization of the Italian Peninsula - became a mosaic of Celts, Iberians, Aryans, and Semites.
7. The Germanic races transformed in the 5th century the western spirit - they were Aryans.
8. The Alleghanian civilizations in America.
9. The Mexican civilizations in America.
10. The Peruvian civilization in America.

Gobineau believed that civilization appeared as the result of conquest by a superior Aryan race over inferior races. He wrote that Aryans were brave, intelligent, and strong, but had a weakness in creativity. A small influx of blood of other races, especially Semitic, improved this weakness. However, Gobineau warned, too much race mixing would result in the ultimate destruction of civilization.

Gobineau also wrote novels, notably Les Pléiades (1874). His study La Renaissance (1877) was also admired in his day. Both of these works strongly expressed his reactionary aristocratic politics, and his hatred of democratic mass culture.

Legacy

Although his racial theories did not receive immediate attention in Europe, it was through the influence of the Bayreuth circle and Richard Wagner that his views became popular, and his anti-Semitic theories developed.

Josiah Clark Nott, a leader of the polygenist movement (that suggested that Whites and Blacks were two distinct species), translated Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines into English. Gobineau's work has been continuously republished, most recently by contemporary White nationalist groups such as Noontide Press.

Adolf Hitler and Nazism borrowed much of Gobineau's ideology, though Gobineau himself was not particularly anti-semitic. Gobineau saw Jews as strong, intelligent people who were very much a part of the superior race and who, if anything, stimulated industry and culture. As such, when the Nazis adopted Gobineau's theories, they were forced to extensively edit his work, much as they did in the case of Nietzsche's writings.

To Bahá'ís, Gobineau is known as the person who obtained the only complete manuscript of the early history of the Bábí religious movement of Persia, written by Hâjji Mirza Jân of Kashan, who was put to death by the Persian authorities in 1852. The manuscript now is in the Bibliothèque nationale at Paris.

Publications

• Gobineau, Arthur de. 1988 (original 1846). Mademoiselle Irnois and Other Stories. University of California Press. ISBN 0520059468
• Gobineau, Arthur de. 1999 (original 1855). The Inequality of Human Races. Howard Fertig. ISBN 0865274304
• Gobineau, Arthur de. 2002 (original 1859). Trois ans en Asie. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 1421228114
• Gobineau, Arthur de. 1971. The World of the Persians. Gifford. ISBN 9993636460
• Gobineau, Arthur de. 1978 (original 1874). The Pleiads. H. Fertig.
• Gobineau, Arthur de. 1913 (original 1877). The Renaissance. G.P. Putnam's Sons.
• Gobineau, Arthur de. 2001 (original 1879). Histoire d\'Ottar Jarl pirate norven conqunt du pays de Bray, en Normandie et de sa descendance. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 054392274X
• Gobineau, Arthur de. 1984. Etudes critiques: 1842-1847. Klincksieck. ISBN 2865630692
• Gobineau, Arthur de. 1993. Au royaume des Hellènes. M. Nadeau. ISBN 286231112X
• Gobineau, Arthur de. 1995. La danseuse de Shamakha. Serpent à plumes. ISBN 2908957795
• Gobineau, Arthur de. 2006. The Crimson Handkerchief and Other Stories. Pomona Press. ISBN 1406794244
• Gobineau, Arthur de, & Richard Wagner. 2001. Correspondance 1880-1882. Nizet. ISBN 2707812587

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Biddiss, Michael D. 1970. Father of racist ideology: The social and political thought of Count Gobineau. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0297000853
• Boissel, Jean. 1974. Gobineau, l'Orient et l'Iran. Klincksieck. ISBN 225201623X
• Boissel, Jean. 1993. Gobineau: Biographie - mythes et réalité. Berg International. ISBN 2900269849
• Raeders, Georges. 1996. Conde de Gobineau no Brasil. Paz e Terra. ISBN 8521902050
• Smith, Annette & David Smith. 1987. Comte Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (1816-82). Retrieved on February 15, 2007.
• Spring, G. M. 1995. The Philosophy of the Count de Gobineau. Scott-Townsend Publishers. ISBN 1878465139
• Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1968. The European revolution: Correspondence with Gobineau. P. Smith.
• Encyclopedia of World Biography on Gobineau, Comte de. BookRags.com. Retrieved on February 15, 2007.

External links

• A Gentleman in the Outports: Gobineau and Newfoundland – On Gobineau’s diplomatic work in Newfoundland
• Alexis de Tocqueville – Website dedicated to Alexis de Tocqueville
• Biographical sketch – Gobineau’s biography on Encyclopedia Iranica
• Joseph Arthur de Gobineau - Gobineau’s biography on Answers.com
• Parsifal and Race – On Richard Wagner and Gobineau, and their racial views
• Three Years in Asia – Gobineau’s biography and a review of his book “Three Years in Asia”

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