Gobineau: “Racial Vitality” Was the Prime Mover of History and That Vitality Was Found in an “Aryan” Master Race

In the nineteenth century, racism joined nationalism as an integral element of European culture. In the 1850s, Arthur Comte de Gobineau published an Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races. According to Gobineau, “racial vitality” was the prime mover of history. That “racial vitality” was now found in an “Aryan” master race. “Aryan” referred to the ancient Indo-European culture from which European civilization had supposedly sprung. Gobineau believed that Europe’s global hegemony resulted from the superior characteristics of the “Aryan” race. But he worried about “Aryans” engaging in miscegenation, or racial intermixing, which he saw as the demise of all great races.

--Catherine Epstein, Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths, Wiley Short Histories (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 5.