GOBINEAU, JOSEPH-ARTHUR, count. — Born at Ville d'Avray on 14 July 1816, died at Turin on 13 October 1882. A diplomat in many European and extra-European capitals, he was a varied and prolific writer. He wrote poetry, short stories, and novels, such as Les Pléiades (1874); dramas, such as La Renaissance (1877), a brilliant evocation of sixteenth-century Italy in its most significant figures, including Savonarola, Cesare Borgia, Giulio II, Leone X, and Michelangelo; books on 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 vant 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 antidemocratic and racist ideas.
Proceeding from the assumption that the problems of history can and must be explained in the light of ethnic principles, he holds that the destiny of peoples is determined by the diversity of races, and that everything great accomplished in the world is due to strong races, which remain dominant so long as they preserve themselves from mixture with weak races. Thus the Aryans, who prevailed wherever they settled, declined only when they mingled with the vanquished, giving rise to those hybrid races by which the world is now populated. The Aryan race, however, has not entirely disappeared; some pure individuals still remain to represent it, scattered throughout the world, “sons of kings” and “calandri,” as they are called in Les Pléiades.
According to G., the people among whom these individuals are most numerous is the Germanic people. This explains the success of the Essay in Germany, where it fostered modern racist theories.