The Passing Of The Great Race Or The Racial Basis Of European History

by Madison Grant, Henri Fairfield Osborne (Preface)

This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Genres: History, Race, Politics, Anthropology, Nonfiction, Society, Research

476 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1916

About the author

Madison Grant was a lawyer, historian, racial theorist, eugenicist and anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a conservationist and eugenicist, notably contributing to the "Nordic migration theory" and the concept of a "master race."

Grant played an active role in wildlife and environment preservation as well in diverse philanthropic organizations, and was an staunch supporter of immigration restriction and anti-miscegenation laws.

Reviews

[Matthew W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the greatest anthropological examination of European racial history. If you enjoy the works of Lothrop Stoddard and/or Hans F. K. Günther, you will love "The Passing of the Great Race."

Apparently, Adolf Hitler was such a fan of this book that he wrote Madison Grant a fan letter. I find that to be odd considering Grant claims that only a small fraction of modern Germans are of the pure Nordic type. Although Germany was originally purely Nordic - disastrous wars (the Thirty Years' War wiped out around 2/3 of the German population) and the immigration of Slavic/Alpine types - completely changed the racial population of the country in just a couple centuries. The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries are the only regions in the world that still have Nordic majority populations.

Anyways, "The Passing of the Great Race" is especially interesting when you put it in context with today. Grant's worst fears were realized in a manner that far exceeded his pessimistic anticipations.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a must-have book for anyone who supports white supremacy, eugenics, and racism. It really deserves one star for it's completely irrational and misguided claims about racial taxonomies, its pseudo-science and its historical inaccuracies. But I bumped it up a little for its historical and philosophical significance because from those perspectives it's really fascinating - if horrifying - to read about how people actually thought about race a hundred years ago and more.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

An acutely prophetic "no more brother wars" book, published in 1916. The first half is Grant describing categories based on physical traits, with Nordic and Teutonic races superior, followed by Alpine and Mediterranean, then Baltic and Slav, and negroes the lowest. The rest of the book is where Grant theorized that the Thirty Years War and the Napoleonic Wars had decimated the strong Nordic and Teutonic populations of Germany and France, forever changing the demographics, and allowing weak and cowardly men, who had failed to fight, to replace the great bloodlines.

[Simon · Rating 1 out of 5]

A disturbing book to read when considering that Madison Grant was a strong influencer of the early eugenicists in the USA (Davenport most specifically) and that his unscientific musings on the use of skulls shape and language as evidence of racial superiority and weakness. The causal way in which he makes sweeping conclusions about the need to control populations in favor of "the Great Race" is truly scary.

[Paul Brown · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tripe. The fact that this sort of pseudoscience still informs some people’s opinions today is pathetic. But I’m glad I read it. Know your enemy.

[Dave Schaafsma]

I am listening to American historian Heather Cox Richardson (one of my absolute favorite guides to the present moment, writing A Letter From An American EVERY DAY of this current administration), on Substack live with JoJo Jerz talking about this vile book that is approved by, one guide for, Project 2025 and some remaining folks in the MAGA crowd but not by a majority of Americans, and surely not the majority of the world.

HCR thinks that democracy ultimately wins over a few old white men wanting to stay in power, noting the plummeting ratings and the worsening authoritarian clown show, though she admits things will get worse before they get better.

[Matthew Selby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Madison Grant’s Passing of the Great Race is a must read for anyone wishing to learn about 20th century racialism. The book is short and sweet, getting straight to the point without much complication. He primarily focuses on the Nordic race, its characteristics, and how it has “fell” from dominance in Europe. While reading it, you should take into consideration the era of which it was written, for many of his points or examples are now obsolete.

[Da1tonthegreat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, this book changed my mind. I consider myself a race realist, and so naturally subscribe to the major racial divisions of mankind (i.e. caucasoid, negroid, mongoloid, etc) as propounded in the works of Charles Darwin, Carleton Coon, and J. Philippe Rushton. However, I rejected Nordicism and in general the concept of sub-races, such as Alpines. But Madison Grant argues and explains the subject so well that he convinced me. Ideologically, the basic racial groupings are essential to have as a concept (Nordicism instead of pan-Europeanism hindered rather than helped the Third Reich), but in reality the course of human evolution is so much more complex, so layered. It's not black and white, it's a garden of forking paths. Think how rich our understanding of history and biology would be if only modern scientists weren't flat earthers on the subject of race. The true diversity of the human race and its myriad peoples and their cultures (not the melting pot multiculturalist conformist consumerist faux-diversity that Grant saw coming and inveighed against) is truly beautiful and astounding.

[RK Byers · Rating 5 out of 5]

anyone who doesn’t believe that this book has been the basis for Western policy for the last 75 years either hasn’t read it or hasn’t turned their head from side to side and looked around.

[Karlo · Rating 2 out of 5]

A weird mixture of phrenology, social Darwinism, and anthropology for the sole purpose of establishing the superiority of the "Nordic" race and justification of eugenics in maintaining the purity of races. The book is mostly based on obsolete evolutionary and genetic concepts (hereditary mental and physical characteristics preserved through copulation in the same racial groups ) and a rather chaotic description of cultural influences through the history of mankind. I started to read to book for the sole purpose of finding intellectual ideas present in the contemporary right-wing terrorism and the growing "eco-fascist" movement, but unfortunately didn't find any, so the book is only valuable as a historical account of early American fascination with eugenics.

[Douglas · Rating 1 out of 5]

A fantastically "just-so" book: things are ordered exactly as Grant wishes them to be, he just makes up whatever conditions he needs to knit things together. He marshals an impressive amount of facts and scholarship to an entirely useless aim. It's not that he doesn't know historical facts (in part), and it's not that he doesn't know anthropological facts (in part). It's that he has no *coherent, rational* models to knit everything together, other than his obviously deeply felt prejudices, in all senses of that word. He supposes the existence of events and contacts and movements without support, neglects the facts that contradict his models, and emphasises beyond all reason heredity over environment (as racists do). Grant uses his hand-waving to order the "races" of the world, and big spoiler: the tall, fair people are on top, the short, dark people are on the bottom, and the middle is occupied by vast numbers of the, and this is a quote, "suspiciously swarthy". He also doesn't like universal suffrage, socialists, labor unions, or Jews, none of which were a surprise given that, you know, he's a racist asshole.

For Grant, nearly anything good in history happened because of the superior race, no matter where it occurred. Humans originated in Asia, not Africa. "Aryan" peoples from Asia arose from secondary Nordic invasions. The past genius of the Greeks is evidence of the superior race being more widespread in the past than now. Renaissance geniuses? All "Nordic-type". Plenty of vile opinions about the countries and peoples of the modern-day (100 years ago) Europe, Western Hemisphere, and Asia. And so on. It's like those people who 100% believe (and the near- and long-dead who believed) against all possible evidence that Jesus was actually tall and blue-eyed.

Apart from this, Grant doesn't understand inheritance. A lot of people didn't at this time. The problem is that like his history and archaeology, his lack of knowledge of inheritance is handled not with caution, or even biased caution, but only with hand-wavy bias. The irony here, and this was *not* beyond the science of the time to understand, is that his model of a superior race this fragile in terms of inheritance and with this predisposition to put itself in harm's way doing the hard things because of its superiority -- his title refers (p168) to the dying of "Nordics" in the Great War -- would result in its not having much persistence at all. He seems to understand this, but not the irony, as he is continually talking about the need for protective breeding. The supposed hardiness is just not.

Lest those who discover this book think it represented some suppressed consensus of the past, Grant was considered quite an outlier at the time. Sure, there were plenty of racist anthropologists and historians, but even they thought Grant bent the facts and the history much too far.

[Harry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although fundamentally flawed - very refreshing!

[Xavier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A huge inspiration to me, although I cannot recommned it to other readers. Historically significant but very antiquated. I do recommend looking into modern day research on this topic.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

A concise, but antiquated overview of European physical anthropology.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolutely phenomenal book. Grant's work here, while condensed, provides a huge amount of invaluable information, much of which since it's printing 100+ years ago, has now been vindicated and substantiated by modern disciplines such as linguistics, anthropology, genetics, etc. In an uncanny prescience, much of his conclusions, which he often derives from verifiable recorded historical patterns, we have now been able to watch continue in real time over the past century in varying degrees. The dilution of diverse races and types, and loss of diversity in demographics, is happening due to uncontrolled immigration as well as indiscriminate interracial blending, and we will witness wholesale changes and losses of this racial diversity over the next century if it continues unabated. And as Grant notes numerous examples from history, and predicts for the future, this dilution of the founding homogeneous stock of a nation or region, does in fact lead to a decline of the overall social and cultural health of the nation and its eventual disintegration into a populace completely foreign in blood and culture to its founding stock and incapable of maintaining that original societal structure, as we're now witnessing in the West. To say Grant was in error, is to suffer from Ostrich syndrome to a severe degree, only maintainable by complete denial of both recorded history and present reality.

If one actually reads Grant's work objectively, and then checks the history and science itself, one cannot help but see that much of his conclusions are incredibly sound and empirically based. Some of his critics try to claim he used phrenology in his work, but that just shows that such a critic has never actually read the book. Grant never once uses phrenology, but instead uses the cephalic index, which is a valid classification of skull shape. And even in this, he never solely associates skull shape (brachycephalic, dolichocephalic, etc) with intelligence or capacity for accomplishment. In fact, anyone who has actually read the book knows that even while Grant states the cephalic index is an incredibly valuable tool, it must be used with caution. For instance, he states, "This cephalic index, though an extremely important if not the controlling unit character, is, nevertheless, but a single character and must be checked up with other somatological traits." (p. 8) He further states, "Overemphasis of the importance of the skull shape as a somatological character can easily be misleading, and other unit characters than skull proportions must also be carefully considered in all determinations of race." (p. 69) As a final example, Grant states, "In considering skull characters we must remember that, while indicative of independent descent, the size and shape of the head are not closely related to brain power." (p. 98) As you can see, Grant's critics are lying to you. It's a fallacy of poisoning the well, to try and make you think Grant was some racist, phrenologist kook, when in actuality, he was nothing of the sort, but rather he was a skilled anthropologist using valid scientific tools and established history to derive scientifically sound conclusions.

So why do Grant's critics resort to lying about his work? Well, keep in mind his largest body of critics were adherents to the debunked Lamarckian theory. They're not exactly fond of up-to-date science and empiricism. Meanwhile Grant and his peers were staunch hereditarians, which has now been proven correct. But the real push against Grant came not from a legitimate re-evaluation of the data and facts via a scientific exploration, but rather from a social activism goal. The primary opponents of Grant were Franz Boas and his pseudo-scientific views on race denialism from which the nonsense "races don't exist" ideas were born, his focus on "cultural relativism," alongside the works of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Gene Weltfish (some of whom were connected to Jewish Communism). This group were some of the first to introduce the utterly debunked and unscientific hypothesis of racial egalitarianism, and they were often forces within "anti-racist" social activism. Their work, with the exception of some of that of Boas, was almost entirely motivated by, and tainted by, this egalitarian activism rather than any truly honest scientific empiricism. The opposition to Grant and other empiricist anthropologists came almost entirely from a social equality movement to eliminate any science of the human races, and to promote any "science" that might help push the egalitarian "melting pot" ideology. It was honestly, the forbear to cultural Marxism, built upon an "anti-racist," pollyannish egalitarianism, cultural relativism foundation, that disregarded empiricism in exchange for confirmation bias toward the social activist goal while simultaneously demonizing the empiricist position by calling it "scientific racism" as a pejorative. Thus, Grant, the once highly respected man who saved the American Bison (among many other species) from extinction, helped create Glacier National Park and Denali National Park, and co-founded the Save the Redwoods League, along with key contributions to anthropology, was marginalized and through a coordinated effort of Boas and his activist comrades, bullied control of the American Anthropological Association away from Grant, where they could then spread their pseudo-science egalitarianism and social activism throughout the anthropological discipline without hindrance.

And of course, to further turn Grant and his work into a pariah of the anthropology field, his critics did everything they could to associate his work with National Socialist Germany using the unending war propaganda, simply because Hitler--who was very proactive in advancing the sciences in Germany--greatly admired the work. It was assured to us that Grant's work, and his work alone, was the impetus behind the alleged "genocidal euthanasia program" that has since largely been debunked. At the time of the kangaroo court Nuremberg trials, this alleged euthanasia program was thought to be legitimate, but later discovery of documents revealed it was a very small and narrow-in-scope short term program to provide merciful deaths to those who were too ill, injured, or debilitated to carry on independently in the midst of a world war. Even then Himmler amended the program greatly, stating in recovered documents, “in the future, only mentally ill prisoners may be processed by the medical boards created for Program 14 f 13. All other prisoners unfit for work (tuberculars, bedridden, crippled, etc.) are in principle exempt from this program. Bedridden prisoners should be assigned work that they can perform in bed.” (Nuremberg document NO-1007) And Hitler had discontinued the general use of the program in 1941. Still such measures are cringed at by our standards today, but the reality of the program was nowhere near the atrocity propaganda claims that made it sound like hundreds of thousands of mentally and/or physically disabled people were rounded up and euthanized. And from the huge stash of documents recovered from Auschwitz, it was definitively determined that neither mentally ill inmates nor those irrecoverably or permanently unfit for work were killed, let alone inmates merely temporarily sick. We too often forget, that in the middle of a multi-front war, people are a resource and are not disposable; even those who can only work from a bed. However, the atrocity propaganda was a potent weapon in tainting Grant and his work by weak association, and making the sound science of the human races a taboo topic that was no longer acceptable, despite its empiricism and historical record.

In the end, Grant's ideas and conclusions have stood the test of time and received vindication from the modern fields, even if inadvertently. But his work in this book was sufficiently maligned and lied about to the point that almost everyone thinks that it's some sort of racist tome, which is ironic because it barely mentions any races outside of Europe. His praises and criticisms of various races are largely of those of the European descent. His critical talk of inferiority is almost entirely of other White races of Europe. But to hear the activists version, you'd think it was some awful racist book that degrades the non-Whites and "mudbloods" and whatnot. That's one way you know that you should read this book. There's a reason they poison the well and try to paint the book as something that it's not, and why they DON'T want you to read it. Find out why.

[Fay Lin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book at the same time as I read “White Fragility”, two books dealing with racist themes but from very opposite viewpoints.

While this book has the worse reputation, it’s mainly concerned with cataloging types of various European peoples. He puts Nordics at the top followed by Mediterraneans and Alpines and mentions the histories, accomplishments, and tribal background of each.

Grant is from a time that was interested in human evolution and he shows that by attempting to justify his opinions by backing them up with “science.” Much of what he writes is just silly but there are plenty of interesting historical anecdotes that are basically forgotten knowledge.

If you’re interested in how people thought about history, historically, it’s worth picking up for that reason alone.

According to Grant I’m “Alpine”, and I have to admit I got a kick out of reading this because I had just been to an animal sanctuary for dingos and the host explained that there are desert dingos, with long legs and big ears, versus alpine dingos who evolved in the mountains, and have short legs and bushy tails. As I had no trouble traveling up and down the hills of the sanctuary within our tour group she jokingly called me an “Alpine dingo”, in contrast with my “Desert dingo” boyfriend whose long legs forced him to expend extra energy to clamber over the rocky landscape.

Who knew that my affinity for mountains and ability to scramble over rocks would be so readily apparent to both biology professionals and out-of-date racial theorists? While I don’t think we should laud this book, there’s obviously something there.

[Ufuk Algac · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing, I was always confused about terms like DEI or culture as they are used in politics. Now I understand the origin of a lot of these ideas. All of the discourse in contemporary politics is a euphemism to this book. Too bad that it might have inadvertently destroyed the western civilization.

[Victoria]

read about 54 pages for class to analyze Eugenics movement; do not think I could read any more of this...

[Jo-jean Keller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and unnerving discussion of how the mixing of races destroys intellectual prowess, ambition, creativity. Published in 1915. Helps to show the progress to Hitler's beliefs and actions.

[Anonymous4999 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Considerably better researched and less opinionated than Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races as far as scientifically racist opinion pieces go but obviously The Passing of the Great Race is not an especially enlightening book, as it is filled with inaccuracies and gaps in scientific research.
Its support for eugenics is based more on Grant's personal opinion than on any sound scientific backing and the racial science and history is obviously incredibly outdated.
The Passing of the Great Race is a book to be read strictly for historical and educational purposes as it contains passages that exemplify commonly held opinions at the time in Europe and America but it's by no means a scientific text and it has been superseded by later research that debunks many of the claims it makes.

[Dan Harrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

No. I didn't read it, just wanted to publish this excerpt from an actual historical scholar's book -- The Guarded Gate by Daniel Okrent.

"The individuals who had welded together the scientific racists and the immigration restrictionists generally faded into a kind of oblivion, most of them known today only to scholars, or to twent-first-century xenophobes longing for the old days. (Long out of copyright, The Passing of the Great Race was available in at least eight different editions in 2018, and both the book and its author were invoked with reverence on racist websites.)"

The Book was also named by way of justification by some of the Nuremberg war crimes defendants.

[K M Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grant was no anthropologist and that is reflected in this work. His definitions of what constitutes the supposed Alpine, Nordic and Mediterranean races is nonsensical and likely borrowed from De Gobineau's works. Moreover his attempts at attributing the destruction of the supposed Nordic Romans and Greeks to mixing along racial lines is nonsensical even by standards of 20th century racial science. I wouldn't really recommend it however if one is interested in how the phenomenon of Nordicism emerged and developed in the United States and parts of Europe then this can be included.

[k v white · Rating 1 out of 5]

Never read so much contradictory pseudo scientific garbage in my life. The guy rambles so much he forgets that he said the complete opposite, chapters or even paragraphs prior. It would be comedic if it didn't have such a devastating impact on our world. The problem today is that enough hasn't been done to remove this man's poison from our collective mindset. They banned the tripe that is Mein Kampf until it was cleansed from the German psyche but they allowed this codswallop to manifest.

[Joakim1011 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Speechless

[Brooks Tate]

The most racist book I’ve ever read.

[ₛₘₐₗₗₙₐₘₑ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nordcucks cope and seethe, Mediterranean countries are Chad Europe.

[Kemet Beauty · Rating 1 out of 5]

I support not mixing of races, it weakens our superiority. Guess what “blacks” are the alpha & omega🫶🏾

[Jagoda Baczkun]

czułam sie choro czytając to, ale must have dla sprawdzenia jak myślano (i uczono) o rasach podczas 1 wojny sw i jak pseudo nauka była dosłownie thriving

[lillian · Rating 1 out of 5]

ts ass

[Ernest · Rating 1 out of 5]

Written in the early 1900s, the book tries to explain the superior culture of Nordic/Aryan cultures. Its has many racist conclusions based on the author 's opinions and is a weak attempt to write a Darwinian "Origin of Species " for European cultures.