Arthur de Gobineau | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Count Arthur Joseph de Gobineau, c. 1860s | |
| Born | Joseph Arthur de Gobineau 14 July 1816 Ville-d'Avray, Hauts-de-Seine, France |
| Died | 13 October 1882 (aged 66) Turin, Italy |
| Occupation(s) | Novelist, diplomat, travel writer |
| Spouse | Clémence Gabrielle Monnerot |
| Children | Christine de Gobineau Diane de Guldencrone |
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (French: [ɡɔbino]; 14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat who is best known for helping introduce scientific race theory and "racial demography", and for developing the theory of the Aryan master race and Nordicism. Known to his contemporaries as a novelist, diplomat and travel writer, he was an elitist who, in the immediate aftermath of the Revolutions of 1848, wrote An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races. In it he argued that aristocrats were superior to commoners and that aristocrats possessed more Aryan genetic traits because of less interbreeding with inferior races.
Gobineau's writings were quickly praised by white supremacist, pro-slavery Americans like Josiah C. Nott and Henry Hotze, who translated his book into English. They omitted around 1,000 pages of the original book, including those parts that negatively described Americans as a racially mixed population. Inspiring a social movement in Germany named Gobinism,[1] his works were also influential on prominent antisemites like Richard Wagner, Wagner's son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Romanian politician Professor A. C. Cuza, and leaders of the Nazi Party, who later edited and re-published his work.
- ^ Gould, Stephen Jay (1996). The Mismeasure of Man. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 359. ISBN 978-0393314250.
Gobineau was undoubtedly the most influential academic racist of the nineteenth century. His writings strongly affected such intellectuals as Wanger and Nietzsche and inspired a social movement known as Gobinism.