The French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau developed a set of ideas that were influential during his life and some of them that impacted later social thinkers, such politicians, anthropologists, and sociologists. While still alive, he was a major influence on "Gobinism", also known as Gobineauism, an academic, political and social movement formed in 19th-century Germany. An ethnically pro-Germanic, anti-national and particularly anti-French ideology, the movement influenced German nationalists and intellectuals such as Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Racial theories Shocked by the Revolution of 1848, Gobineau first expressed his racial theories in his 1848 epic poem Manfredine. In it he revealed his fear of the revolution being the beginning of the end of aristocratic Europe, with common folk descended from lesser breeds taking over. The poem, set at the time of the revolt in Naples against Spanish rule in 1647 (an allegory for 1848), concerns the eponymous character, a noblewoman on whom Gobineau spends a good five hundred lines tracing her descent from Viking ancestors. It features the lines:
Gobineau came to believe race created culture. He argued that distinctions among the three races—"black" (Negroid race), "white" (Caucasian race) and "yellow" (Mongoloid race)—were natural barriers; "race-mixing” breaks those barriers and leads to chaos. Of the three races, he argued blacks were physically very strong but incapable of intelligent thought. Regarding the "yellows" (Asians) he said they were physically and intellectually mediocre but had an extremely strong materialism that allowed them to achieve certain results. Finally, Gobineau wrote whites were the best and greatest of the three races as they alone were capable of intelligent thought, creating beauty and were the most beautiful. "The white race originally possessed the monopoly of beauty, intelligence and strength" he wrote, and any positive qualities the Asians and blacks possessed was due to subsequent miscegenation.
Within the white race, there was a further subdivision between the Aryans, who were the epitome of all that was great about the white race and non-Aryans. Gobineau took the term Aryan ("light one" or "noble one") from Hindu legend and mythology, which describes how the Indian subcontinent was conquered at some time in the distant past by the Aryans. This is generally believed to have reflected folk memories of the arrival of the Indo-European peoples into the Indian subcontinent. In the 19th century, there had been much public interest in the discovery by Orientalists like William Jones of the Indo-European languages, and that apparently unrelated languages such as English, Irish, Albanian, Italian, Greek, Russian, Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, Kurdish, Persian and so forth were all part of the same family of languages spoken across a wide swath of Eurasia from Ireland to India. The ancient Hindu scriptures with their tales of Aryan heroes were of major interest to scholars attempting to trace the origins of the Indo-European peoples. Gobineau believed the white race had originated somewhere in Siberia, the Asians in the Americas and the blacks in Africa. He thought the numerical superiority of the Asians had forced the whites to make a vast migration that led them into Europe, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent; both the Bible and Hindu legends about the conquering Aryan heroes reflected folk memories of this migration. In turn, the whites had broken into three sub-races, namely the Hamitic, Semitic and Japhetic peoples. The latter were the Aryans of Hindu legends and were the best and greatest of all the whites.
He originally wrote that, given the past trajectory of civilization in Europe, white race miscegenation was inevitable and would result in growing chaos. Despite his opinion that whites were the most beautiful of the races, he believed Asian and black women had immense powers of sexual attraction over white men. Whenever whites were in close proximity to blacks and Asians, the result was always miscegenation as white men were seduced by the beauty of Asian and black women, to the detriment of whites. Though not expressly obsessed with antisemitism, Gobineau saw the Jews as praiseworthy for their ability to avoid miscegenation while at the same time depicting them as another alien force for the decay of Aryan Europe. Gobineau thought the development of civilization in other periods was different from that of his own, and speculated that other races might have superior qualities in those civilizations. But, he believed European civilization represented the best of what remained of ancient civilizations and held the most superior attributes capable for continued survival.
Focus on Aryans as a superior race Gobineau asserted that the Aryans had founded the ten great civilizations of the world, writing: "In the ten civilizations no Negro race is seen an initiator. Only when it is mixed with some other, can it even be initiated into a civilization. Similarly, no spontaneous civilization is to be found among the yellow races; and when the Aryan blood is exhausted stagnation supervenes". Gobineau, mindful of his own supposed noble and Frankish descent classified the Germanic peoples as being the Aryans in Europe.
He believed Aryans had also moved into India and Persia. Gobineau used medieval Persian epic poetry, which he treated as completely historically accurate accounts, together with the beauty of Persian women (whom he saw as the most beautiful in the world) to argue that Persians were once great Aryans, but unfortunately the Persians had interbred too often with the Semitic Arabs for their own good. At the same time, Gobineau argued that in Southeast Asia the blacks and Asians had intermixed to create the sub-race of the Malays. He classified Southern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa as racially mixed.J. A. Gobineau: The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races. J. B. Lippincott & Co, Philadelphia (1856), pp. 337–338
Gobineau's primary thesis was that European civilization flowed from Greece to Rome, and then to Germanic and contemporary civilization. He thought this corresponded to the ancient Indo-European culture, which earlier anthropologists had misconceived as "Aryan"—a term that only Indo-Iranians are known to have used in ancient times.Mallory, J. P. (1991), In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Culture and Myth, London: Thames & Hudson, p. 125. This included groups classified by language like the Celts, Slavs and the Germans.Among the groups which Gobineau classified as Aryan were the Hindus, Iranians, Hellenes, Celts, Slavs and Germanic people. Gobineau later came to use and reserve the term Aryan only for the "Germanic race", and described the Aryans as la race germanique.A. J. Woodman, 2009, The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus, p. 294. (The Germanic race was also regarded by Gobineau as beautiful, honourable and destined to rule: 'cette illustre famille humaine, la plus noble'. While arya was originally an endonym used only by Indo-Iranians, "Aryan" became, partly because of the Essai, a racial designation of a race, which Gobineau specified as 'la race germanique'). By doing so, he presented a racist theory in which Aryans—that is Germanic people—were all that was positive.So that the reader not be left in ignorance as to who the Aryans are, Gobineau stated, La race germanique était pourvue de toute l'énergie de la variété ariane ("The Germanic race was provided with all the energy of the Aryan race"). We see, then, that he presents a racist theory in which the Aryans, or Germans, are all that is good. Comparative literature. by American Comparative Literature Association. Modern Language Association of America. Comparative Literature Section.; University of Oregon. 1967, page 342
Gobineau described the Aryans as physically extremely beautiful and very tall; of immense intelligence and strength, and endowed with incredible energy, great creativity in the arts and a love of war. Like many other racists, he believed one's looks determined what one did, or in other words, that beautiful people created beautiful art while ugly people created ugly art. He attributed much of the economic turmoil in France to pollution of the races.
Despite his pride in being French, Gobineau often attacked many aspects of French life under the Third Republic as reflecting "democratic degeneration"—namely the chaos that he believed resulted when the mindless masses were allowed political power—which meant that critical reception of Gobineau in France was very mixed. His contempt for ordinary people emerges from his letters, where his preferred term for common folk was la boue ("the mud"). Gobineau questioned the belief that the black and yellow races belong to the same human family as the white race and share a common ancestor. Trained neither as a theologian nor a naturalist, and writing before the popular spread of evolutionary theory, Gobineau took the Bible to be a true telling of human history.
Other views and writings
Novels and essays Besides promoting racism, Gobineau also wrote several well received novels. Writers such as Marcel Proust, Jean Cocteau and André Gide have praised him as one of France's greatest novelists. In his native France, he has been and is still often praised by literary critics as a master of French style whose novels were written with elegant verve and a superb sense of irony. French critic Pierre-Louis Rey and British historian Michael D. Biddiss have both decried the tendency of French critics to sever Gobineau the racist from Gobineau the novelist, maintaining his novels reflect his racial theories just as much as the Essai. Gobineau's 1874 novel Les Pléiades is concerned with a few exceptionally talented people who are examples of "ethnic persistence" in Europe surrounded by vast masses of morons. In his introduction to Les Pléiades, Gobineau says the purpose of the novel is to advance the theory "that there are no longer classes, that there are no longer peoples, but only—in the whole of Europe—certain individuals who float like the wreckage upon the flood".
Another one of his literary works is Nouvelles Asiatiques (1876), which concerns the impact of miscegenation in modern Asia as reflected in the life stories of a diverse group of people. Nouvelles Asiatiques is unique as his only novel to feature non-white protagonists. In common with his other novels, its message is fundamentally pessimistic, but it allows Gobineau's intense affection for Persia to shine through.
Despite its title, Nouvelles Asiatiques is a series of "Oriental" short stories set in Persia, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Its recurring theme is that the character of the people is determined by race. An example is an Uzbek noblewoman, adopted by a Russian officer, retaining the ferocity of her race by attempting to blind his biological daughter while an Afghan prince rises far above the rest because of his Aryan blood.
In his 1877 novel La Renaissance, Gobineau again highlights the theme of a few gifted "Aryan" heroes such as Cesare Borgia and Pope Julius II having the misfortune to be surrounded by an endless multitude of debased inferiors. In La Renaissance, he attacks the entire idea of morality as the basis of action, arguing that a superior few should not be governed by any set of universal moral values. As such, Pope Alexander VI is presented as a hero in La Renaissance, precisely because of the utterly ruthless way in which he advanced the interests of the Borgia family in defiance of morality.
Friendship with Richard Wagner