Arthur de Gobineau: Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines

Arthur de Gobineau: Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines, 1^st edition 1854.

Quotes are from the Editions Pierre Belfond version, 1967.

DISCLAIMER: my knowledge of French is basically limited to, what I learned years ago in high school, so I cannot issue any guarantee that my reading of Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines is anywhere near beyond reproach, only that I have attempted as best I can to figure out, what Gobineau meant with the parts of the book I have picked down upon.

The book is dedicated to King George V (1851-66) of Hannover, and Gobineau opens the dedication with these words:

SIRE,

J’ai l’honneur d’offrir ici à Votre Majesté le fruit de longues méditations et d’études favorites, souvent interrompues, toujours reprises.

Les événements considérables, révolutions, guerres sanglantes, renversements de lois, qui, depuis trop d'années, ont agi sur les Etats européens, tournent aisément les imaginations vers l’examen des faits politiques. Tandis que le vulgaire n’en considère que les résultats immédiats et n’admire ou ne réprouve que l’étincelle électrique dont ils frappent les intérêts, les penseurs plus graves cherchent à découvrir les causes cachées de si terribles ébranlements, et, descendant la lampe à la main dans les sentiers obscurs de la philosophie et de l’histoire, ils vont demander à l’analyse du cœur humain ou à l’examen attentif des annales le mot d’une énigme qui trouble si fort et les existences et les consciences.

That is, Gobineau presents to his majesty the fruits of his speculations and studies into the hidden causes of the "revolutions, bloody wars, and lawlessness" that have been going on in Europe through many years. The picturesque language employed here with expressions such as "descendant la lampe à la main dans les sentiers obscurs de la philosophie et de l’histoire" ("descending with the lamp in hand into the dim passages of philosophy and history") sounds more like something from a gothic novel than from a scientific text.

Gobineau wasn’t himself a scientist either, he was a French diplomat; but he does rely on the scientific books of the time to make up his case. But, of course, the idea of white supremacy wasn't Gobineau's invention, neither was the warning against racial mixture, or any other single element. What is unique is the forging of all this into an attempt to make a theory of social renewal.

Later in the dedication, Gobineau writes:

Les hommes d’aujourd’hui seraient même en droit de faire, devant lui, trophée de qulques mérites qui lui manquent. Mais, si, pour repousser leurs accusations, il vient soudain à évoquer les ombres grandioses des périodes héroïques, que diront-ils? ...

That is, in an unheroic time, if you ask the grand shadows of the past heroic times, what will they answer? Gobineau continues:

Rien, sinon que toutes les belles choses, tombées dans le silence, ne sont pas mortes et qu’elles dorment; que tous les âges ont vu des périodes de transition, époques où la souffrance lutte avec la vie et d’où celle-ci se détache, à la fin, victorieuse et resplendissante, et que, puisque, la Chaldée trop vieillie fut remplacée jadis par la Perse jeune et vigoreuse, la Grèce décrépite par Rome virile et la domination abâtardie d’Augustule par les royaumes des nobles princes teutoniques, de même les races modernes obtiendront leur rajeunissement.

That is, you need to make it happen, not hang around and wait for it to happen to you. The young, vigorous, virile, noble races have won over the older races, when these had lost the qualities that had made them winners in the first place.

All in all, Gobineau reaches the conclusion that ethnicity is the most important question in history:

C’est alors que, d’inductions en inductions, j’ai dû me pénétrer de cette évidence, que la question ethnique domine tous les autres problèmes de l’histoire, en tient la clef, et que l’inégalié des races dont le concour forme une nation, suffit à expliquer tout l’enchaînement des destinés des peuples.

That is, the inequality of races that make up a nation are sufficient to explain how the destinies of peoples are linked together.

The rest of that same paragraph shows the diplomat coming to the fore; Gobineau mentions, just as an example, that by the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Great Britain a new strength came about that ruled some of the peoples of that island by the sword of the illustrious ancestors of his majesty, and now in one August Person, two branches of the same nation have been united in one royal house, which draws its glorious throne rights from distant sources of a most heroic origin.

In 1714, prince-elector (Kurfürst) George of Hannover becomes king of Great Britain, and the personal union between Hannover and Great Britain remains until the accession of Queen Victoria to the British throne in 1837. Hannover itself is occupied by the French in 1803; but the electorate is restored in 1813, and in 1814 Hannover is made a kingdom. During 1849-50, Prussia proposes a plan to construct a central-European union under Prussian leadership. Hannover first supports the plan, but Austrian pressure makes Hannover join a coalition hostile to the union. The plan is finally abandoned, as the Russian Czar Nicolai supports Austria against the union plan. However, in 1865 Prussia and Austria come to disagree over how to distribute the spoils gained from Denmark in the war of 1864, and in 1866 a war breaks out. Hannover like all the other major German states joins Austria. And with the Prussian victory, Hannover is made a Prussian province.

Back to Gobineau, who proceeds with:

Après avoir reconnu qu’il est des races fortes et qu’il en est de faibles, je me suis attaché à observer de préférences les premières, à démêler leurs aptitudes, et surtout à remonter la chaîne de leurs génálogies. En suivant cette méthode, j’ai fini par me convaincre que tout ce qu’il y a de grand, de noble, de fécond sur la terre, en fait de créations humaines, la science, l'art, la civilisation, ramène l’observateur vers un point unique, n’est issu que d’un même germe, n’a résulté que d’une seule pensée, n’appartient qu’à une seule famille dont les différentes branches ont régné dans toutes les contrèes policées de l’Univers.

That is, Gobineau has found out, which races are strong, and which races are weak, and for the former,  traced their genealogies. From this he has convinced himself that all human creations, science, art, civilization, lead to one single point, namely that these are not descended from the same germ, not from the same thought, and not come from a single family which through different branches has ruled all the countries of the Universe.

Now, this is in 1854, where George V supports Austria, the arch-enemy of France. It is a clear possibility that these words in particular refer to the Habsburg dynasty, whose branches once ruled, if not the Universe, then quite a large part of the earth. Now, of course, just as scientists and others in the Renaissance wrote dedications to princes, kings, and popes in order to buy goodwill, or perhaps a well-paid position, we need not necessarily put more into this dedication than that Gobineau clearly wasn't supporting the Habsburg dynasty. That is, we need not assume that Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines was written merely to annoy the Austrian emperor, only that the various events in Europe around 1850 actually did have some importance for the book.

In the preface to the 2^nd edition, Charles Darwin and Darwinism are given a couple of favorable mentions, and the same goes for Henry Thomas Buckle. Apparently Gobineau thinks that Darwin and Buckle are dependent on him:

De là [that social progress and decline are caused by racial mixture] fut tirée la théorie de la sélection devenue si célèbre entre les main de Darwin et plus encore de ses élèves. Il en est r´sulté, entre autres, le système de Buckle, et par l’ecart considérable que les opinions de ce philosophe présent avec les miennes, on peut mesurer l’éloignement relatif des routes que savant se frayer deux pensées hostiles parties d’un point commun.

...

Darwin et Buckle ont créé ainsi les dérivations principales du ruisseau que j’ai ouvert.

Ernst Haeckel, in return, is given a less favorable mention:

A dater de cette réforme indispensable on enlèvera enfin les haches de silex et les couteaux d’obsidienne aux main des anthropoïdes de M. le professeur Haeckel, gens qui en font un si mauvais usage.

(Henry Thomas) Buckle (1821-1862) mentioned together with Darwin was a British historian, who wrote a History of Civilization, volume I published in 1857, and volume II published in 1861. It is true that also Buckle considered society ruled by laws as fixed as those of physics, wherefore he relied on statistics rather than on individual history, and it is also true that Buckle considered Europeans to be the most culturally advanced. However Bockle had been writing on his History before Gobineau published his book. As for Darwin, I fail to see much similarity between anything Darwin wrote and Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines.

The Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines comprises six volumes, the first of which carries the title "Considérations Préliminairies; Définitions, Recherche et Exposition des Lois Naturelles qui Régissent le Monde Social"; that is, "Preliminary Considerations; Definitions, Research and Exposition of the Natural Laws that rule the Social World", quite a positivist title. But unlike Auguste Comte, Gobineau appears not to believe that a common culture can be established. As he writes at the end of the preface:

Aujourd’hui on aime les grandes unités, les vastes amas où les entités isolées disparaissant. C’est ce qu’on suppose être le produit de la science. A chaque époque, celle-ci voudrait dévorer une vérité qui la géne. Il ne faut pas s’en effrayer. Jupiter échappe toujours à la voracité de Saturne, et l’epoux et le fils de Rhée, dieux, l’un comme l’autre, règnent, sans pouvoir s’entredétruire, sur la majesté de l’univers.

That is, it is a never-ending battle, not the final victory of the one over the other, to become the majesty of the universe.

Since I do not have the time and qualifications for a closer examination of the book itself, I will here limit myself to a few points that I have found of particular interest.

In Vol I, chapter 11, "Les différences ethniques sont permantes" ("The ethnic differences are permanent"), Gobineau writes:

Qu’Adam soit l’auteur de notre espèce blanche, il faut l’admettre certainement. Il est bien claire que les Ecritures veulent qu’on l’entendre ainsi, puisque de lui descendent des générations qui incontestablement ont été blanches. Ceci posé, rien ne prouve que, dans la pensée des premiers rédacteurs des généalogies adamites, les créatures qui n’appartenaient pas à la race blanche aient passé pour faire partie de l’espèce.

That is, "Adam is the originator of our white species", and creatures not part of the white race are not part of that species. It should here be understood that Gobineau operates with three main races: white, black, and yellow. The biblical division into Hamites, Semites, and Japhetites is for Gobineau a division within the white race. What should be noticed here, in particular, is that Gobineau considers the Bible to be a reliable source of actual history.

Vol I, chapter 16, the final chapter of that volume, carries the long superscript "Récapitulation; caractères respectifs des trois grandes races; effects sociaux des mélanges; supérorité du type blanc et, dans ce type, de la famille ariane", or, in English, "Recapitulation; respective characters of the three great races; social effects of [racial] mixtures; superiority of the white type, and within that type, of the Aryan family". Gobineau claims that there have been no more tahn ten great civilizations, and that they have all been started by the white race. These civilizations are:

1. The Indian civilization - built around a branche of the white Aryan nation. Note: actually there was an Indian civilization before the Aryan invasion.

2. The Egyptian civilization - founded by an Aryan colony from India. Charles Darwin writes in footnote 5 of The Descent of Man, chapter 7, "On the Races of Man" the following:

   With respect to the figures in the famous Egyptian caves of Abou-Simbel, M. Pouchet says ('The Plurality of the Human Races,' Eng. translat., 1864, p. 50), that he was far from finding recognisable representations of the dozen or more nations which some authors believe that they can recognise. Even some of the most strongly-marked races cannot be identified with that degree of unanimity which might have been expected from what has been written on the subject. Thus Messrs. Nott and Gliddon ('Types of Mankind,' p. 148), state that Rameses II., or the Great, has features superbly European; whereas Knox, another firm believer in the specific distinctness of the races of man ('Races of Man,' 1850, p. 201), speaking of young Memnon (the same as Rameses II., as I am informed by Mr. Birch), insists in the strongest manner that he is identical in character with the Jews of Antwerp. Again, when I looked at the statue of Amunoph III., I agreed with two officers of the establishment, both competent judges, that he had a strongly-marked negro type of features; but Messrs. Nott and Gliddon (ibid. p. 146, fig. 53), describe him as a hybrid, but not of "negro intermixture."

   So, it's not as if it is all that easy to determine the racial status of the ancient Egyptians.

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 transforme in the 5^th 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.

In Vol VI, chapter 7, "Les indigènes américans" ("The native Americans"), discusses the racial status of the native Americans and ends up suggesting that at least the royal families of the three American civilization groups mentioned above (8.-10.) were white, even Aryans of Scandinavian origin.