The Passing of the Great Race
By Madison Grant
Part I - Race, Language, And Nationality
Chapter
VI
Race and Language
|
WHEN a country is invaded
and conquered by a race speaking a foreign language, one of several things
may happen, replacement of both population and language, as in the case of
eastern England when conquered by the Saxons; or adoption of the language of
the victors by the natives, as happened in Roman Gaul, where the invaders
imposed their Latin tongue throughout the land, without substantially
altering the race. In England and Scotland later conquerors,
Danes and Normans, failed to change the Saxon speech of the country, and in
Gaul the German tongue of the Franks, Burgundians, and Northmen could not
displace the language of Rome. Autochthonous inhabitants frequently impose
upon their invaders their own language and customs. In Normandy the
conquering Norse pirates accepted the language, religion, and customs of the
natives, and in a century they vanish from history as Scandinavian heathen
and appear as the foremost representatives of the speech and religion of
Rome. In Hindustan the blond Nordic invaders
forced their Aryan language on the aborigines, but their blood was quickly
and utterly absorbed in the darker strains of the original owners of the
land. A record of the desperate efforts of the conquering upper classes in
India to preserve the purity of their blood persists until this very day in
their carefully regulated system of castes. In our Southern States Jim Crow
cars and social discriminations have exactly the same purpose and
justification. The Hindu to-day speaks a very ancient form
of Aryan language, but there remains not one recognizable trace of the blood
of the white conquerors who poured in through the passes of the Northwest.
The boast of the modern Indian that he is of the same race as his English
ruler, is entirely without basis in fact, and the little dark native lives
amid the monuments of a departed grandeur, professing the religion and
speaking the tongue of his long forgotten Nordic conquerors, without the
slightest claim to blood kinship. The dim and uncertain traces of Nordic
blood in northern India only serve to emphasize the utter swamping of the
white man in the burning South. The power of racial resistance of a dense
and thoroughly acclimated population to an incoming army, is very great. No
ethnic conquest can be complete unless the natives are exterminated and the
invaders bring their own women with them. If the conquerors are obliged to
depend upon the women of the vanquished to carry on the race, the intrusive
blood strain in a short time becomes diluted beyond recognition. It sometimes happens that an infiltration
of population takes place either in the guise of unwilling slaves, or of
willing immigrants, filling up waste places and taking to the lowly tasks
which the lords of the land despise, gradually occupying the country and
literally breeding out their former masters. The former catastrophe happened in the
declining days of Rome, and the south Italians of to-day are very largely
descendants of nondescript slaves of all races, chiefly from the southern and
eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, who were imported by the Romans under
the Empire to work their vast estates. The latter is occurring to-day in many
parts of America, especially in New England. The eastern half of Germany has a Slavic
Alpine substratum which now represents the descendants of the Wends, who by
the sixth century had filtered in as far west as the Elbe, occupying the lands
left vacant by the Teutonic tribes which had migrated southward. These Wends
in turn were Teutonized by a return wave of military conquest from the tenth
century onward, and to-day their descendants are considered Germans in good
standing. Having adopted the German as their sole tongue they are now in
religious, political, and cultural sympathy with the pure Teutons; in fact,
they are quite unconscious of any racial distinction. This historic fact underlies the ferocious
controversy which has been raised over the ethnic origin of the Prussians,
the issue being whether the populations in Brandenburg, Silesia, Posen, and
other districts in eastern Germany, are Alpine Wends or true Nordic Germans.
The truth is that the dominant half of the population is purely Teutonic and
the lower half of the population are merely Teutonized Wends and Poles of
Alpine affinities. Of course these territories must also retain some of their
early Teutonic population, and the blood of the Goth, Burgund, Vandal, and
Lombard, who were at the commencement of our era located there, as well as
the later Saxon element, must enter largely into the composition of the
Prussian of to-day. The most important communities in
continental Europe of pure German type are to be found in old Saxony, the
country around Hanover, and this element prevails generally in the
northwestern part of the German Empire among the Low Dutch-speaking
population, while the High German-speaking population is largely composed of
Teutonized Alpines. All the states involved in the present
world war have sent to the front their fighting Nordic element, and the loss
of life now going on in Europe will fall much more heavily on the blond giant
than on the little brunet. As in all wars since Roman times, from a
breeding point of view, the little dark man is the final winner. No one who
saw one of our regiments march on its way to the Spanish War could fail to be
impressed with the size and blondness of the men in the ranks as contrasted
with the complacent citizen, who from his safe stand on the gutter curb gave
his applause to the fighting man, and then stayed home to perpetuate his own
brunet type. This same Nordic element, everywhere the
type of the sailor, the soldier, the adventurer, and the pioneer, was ever
the type to migrate to new countries, until the ease of transportation and
the desire to escape military service in the last forty years reversed the
immigrant tide. In consequence of this change our immigrants now largely
represent lowly refugees from "persecution" and other social
discards. In most cases the blood of pioneers has
been lost to their race. They did not take their women with them. They either
died childless or left halfbreeds behind them. The virile blood of the
Spanish conquistadores, who are now little more than a memory in Central and
South America, died out from these causes. This was also true in the early days of our
Western frontiersmen, who individually were a far finer type than the
settlers who followed them. |
Continue on to Chapter 7 -
The European Races in Colonies