Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur, Count of

GOBINEAU, Joseph-Arthur, Count of. - Born at Ville d'Avray on 14 July 1816, died at Turin on 13 Oct. 1882. A diplomat in many European and non-European capitals, he was a varied and prolific writer. He wrote poems, short stories, novels, such as Les Pléiades (1874); plays, such as La Renaissance (1877), a brilliant evocation of the Italian Cinquecento in its most significant figures, such as Savonarola, Cesare Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Michelangelo; books of travel, history, religion and philosophy, such as Religions et philosophies dans l'Asie centrale (1865), which earned him a reputation as an orientalist; and political essays, such as La troisième République et ce qu'elle vaut and Ce qui arriva à la France en 1870. His principal work is Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines, published in four volumes between 1853 and 1855, which contains his anti-democratic and racist ideas.

Starting from the premise that the problems of history can and must be explained in the light of ethnic principles, he finds that the destiny of peoples is determined by the diversity of races and that whatever greatness has been achieved in the world is due to the strong races, which dominate as long as they remain immune from mixture with the weak races. Thus the Aryans, who prevailed wherever they settled, did not decline until they intermingled with the conquered, giving rise to those hybrid races with which the world is populated today. The Aryan race, however, has not entirely disappeared, but there still remain to represent it certain pure individuals scattered throughout the world, "sons of kings" and "calandri", as they are called in Les Pléiades.

The people among whom these individuals are most numerous is - according to G. - the Germanic people. This explains the success of the Essai in Germany, where it has fed modern racist theories.

Michele Lecce