Count arthur de gobineau

He was an elitist who, in the immediate aftermath of the Revolutions of , 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. He began his diplomatic career in the late s, and beginning in , variously served as minister to Persia , Brazil , Greece , and Sweden.

As a writer, Gobineau authored novels and short stories, as well as non-fiction travel writings , polemical essays and other philological and anthropological works, including his Essai. His Essai is widely discredited as pseudoscience by modern scholarship. Gobineau himself never had any qualifications in anthropology. Although Gobineau's writings were poorly received in France, they 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, 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.

Cuza , and leaders of the Nazi Party , who later edited and re-published his work.

Joseph Arthur de Gobineau was a French writer and diplomat who is best known for helping introduce scientific race theory and "racial demography".

Gobineau came from an old well-established aristocratic family. Reflecting his hatred of the French Revolution , Gobineau later wrote: "My birthday is July 14th , the date on which the Bastille was captured-which goes to prove how opposites may come together". Gobineau's father was committed to restoring the House of Bourbon and helped the royalist Polignac brothers to escape from France.

Together with her lover she took her son and two daughters on extended wanderings across eastern France, Switzerland and the Grand Duchy of Baden.