The Inequality of Human Races is a book written by Arthur de Gobineau written before 1853. The book is widely considered to be a foundational text of racial theory and is often cited as a precursor to scientific racism. Gobineau's ideas were controversial even in his own time, and the book was widely criticized for its racialist theories. However, the book also had a significant impact on later thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who would go on to develop their own theories of race and culture. Today, the book is widely regarded as a problematic and deeply flawed work that contributed to the development of racist ideologies.
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau was a French aristocrat who was born on July 14, 1816 and died on October 13, 1882. He is best known for helping to make racism more acceptable by using scientific racist theory and "racial demography" and for coming up with the idea of the "Aryan master race." People of his time knew him as a novelist, diplomat, and travel writer. He was an elitist who wrote An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races right after the Revolutions of 1848. In it, he said that aristocrats were better than commoners and that they had more Aryan genes because they didn't mix with people from lower-class races as much. Richard Wagner, his son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Romanian politician Professor A. C. Cuza, and the leaders of the Nazi Party, who later edited and re-published his work, were all influenced by his writings. They also inspired a social movement in Germany called Gobinism.
