An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races

Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines (Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, 1853–1855) is a racist and pseudoscientific work of French writer Arthur de Gobineau,^[1] which argues that there are intellectual differences between human races, that civilizations decline and fall when the races are mixed and that the white race is superior. It is today considered to be one of the earliest examples of scientific racialism.

Expanding upon Boulainvilliers' use of ethnography to defend the Ancien Régime against the claims of the Third Estate, Gobineau aimed for an explanatory system universal in scope: namely, that race is the primary force determining world events. Using scientific disciplines as varied as linguistics and anthropology, Gobineau divides the human species into three major groupings, white, yellow and black, claiming to demonstrate that "history springs only from contact with the white races." Among the white races, he distinguishes the Aryan race, specifically the Nordic race and Germanic peoples, as the pinnacle of human development, comprising the basis of all European aristocracies. However, inevitable miscegenation led to the "downfall of civilizations".

^ Moore, John H. (2008). Encyclopedia of race and racism (PDF). Thomson Gale, Macmillan Publishers. p. 4. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 January 2022. Retrieved 16 February 2022 – via University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

[1] Moore, John H. (2008). Encyclopedia of race and racism (PDF). Thomson Gale, Macmillan Publishers. p. 4. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 January 2022. Retrieved 16 February 2022 – via University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

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