Arthur de Gobineau
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Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (July 14, 1816 - October 13, 1882) was a French aristocrat who became famous for advocating White Supremacy and developing the racialist theory of the "Aryan master race" in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855).
Life & racialist theories
Gobineau was a successful diplomat for the French Second Empire, posted to Persia, before working in Brazil and other countries. 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. Gobineau's tripartite division of human populations corresponds to the categories of "Negroid" {black}, "Caucasoid" {white}, and "Mongoloid" {yellow}. He believed the "white race" superior to the others and that it corresponds to the ancient Indo-European culture also known as "Aryan".
In Gobineau's view the development of empires was ultimately destructive to the "superior races" that created them, since they led to the mixing of distinct "races", seen as inevitable "degeneration". He called this process "Semiticization", because of his belief that Semitic peoples were a product of the Middle-Eastern cross-over between the otherwise distinct three "races." Because he believed Semitic peoples to be a cross between white, black, and yellow racial elements, Gobineau considered Arabs and Jews to be at the bottom of the racial ladder, in contrast to later racial theorists such as Madison Grant, who believed black "Negroids" to be the most primitive "race". Gobineau also considered Nordic peoples to be the "purest" and fairest whites, and so to be superior to other Caucasians, laying the foundations for the "Nordic theory".
He visited Bayreuth, home of Richard Wagner shortly before his death, influencing the development of the anti-Semitic "Bayreuth circle".
Miscellaneous
- He is also known to Bahá'is 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 c.1852. The manuscript is now in the National French Library at Paris.
- 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.
- Gobineau believed himself to be the descendant of Nordic Vikings and Condottieri.de:Arthur de Gobineau
eo:Grafo de Gobineau fr:Joseph Arthur de Gobineau he:ארתור דה גובינו lb:Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau nl:Arthur de Gobineau no:Arthur de Gobineau pt:Arthur de Gobineau ru:Гобино, Жозеф Артюр де sv:Joseph Arthur Gobineau