The Passing of the Great Race
By Madison Grant

Part I - Race, Language, And Nationality

Chapter VI
The European Races in the Colonies

FOR reasons already set forth there are few communities outside of Europe of pure European blood. The racial destiny of Mexico and of the islands and coasts of the Spanish Main is clear. The white man is being rapidly bred out by negroes on the islands and by Indians on the mainland. It is quite evident that the West Indies, the coast region of our Gulf States, and perhaps the black belt of the lower Mississippi Valley, must be abandoned to negroes. This transformation is already complete in Haiti, and is going rapidly forward in Cuba and Jamaica. Mexico and the northern part of South America must also be given over to native Indians with an ever thinning veneer of white culture of the "Latin" type.

In Venezuela the pure whites number about one per cent of the whole population, the balance being Indians and various crosses between Indians, negroes, and whites. In Jamaica the whites number not more than two per cent, while the remainder are negroes or mulattoes. In Mexico the proportion is larger, but the unmixed whites number not more than twenty per cent of the whole, the others being Indians pure or mixed. These latter are the "greasers" of the American frontiersman.

Whenever the incentive to imitate the dominant race is removed, the negro, or for that matter, the Indian, reverts shortly to his ancestral grade of culture. In other words, it is the individual and not the race that is affected by religion, education, and example. Negroes have demonstrated throughout recorded time that they are a stationary species, and that they do not possess the potentiality of progress or initiative from within. Progress from self-impulse must not be confounded with mimicry or with progress imposed from without by social pressure, or by the slavers' lash.

Where two distinct species are located side by side history and biology teach that but one of two things can happen; either one race drives the other out, as the Americans exterminated the Indians, or as the negroes are now replacing the whites in various parts of the South; or else they amalgamate and form a population of race bastards in which the lower type ultimately preponderates. This is a disagreeable alternative with which to confront sentimentalists, but nature is only concerned with results and neither makes nor takes excuses. The chief failing of the day with some of our well meaning philanthropists is their absolute refusal to face inevitable facts, if such facts appear cruel.

In Argentine and south Brazil white blood of the various European races is pouring in so rapidly that a community preponderantly white, but of the Mediterranean type, may grow up, but such limited opportunities as the writer has had to observe Argentine types leads him to question the probability of such a result even there.

In Asia, with the sole exception of the Russian settlements in Siberia, there can be and will be no ethnic conquest, and all the white men in India, the East Indies, the Philippines, and China will leave not the slightest trace behind them in the blood of the native population. After several centuries of contact and settlement the pure Spanish in the Philippines are about half of one per cent. The Dutch in their East Indian islands are even less; while the resident whites in Hindustan amount to about one-tenth of one per cent. Such numbers are infinitesimal and of no force in a democracy, but in a monarchy, if kept free from contamination, they suffice for a ruling caste or a military aristocracy.

Australia and New Zealand, where the natives have been exterminated by the whites, are developing into communities of pure Nordic blood, and will for that reason play a large part in the future history of the Pacific. The bitter opposition of the Australians and Californians to the admission of Chinese coolies and Japanese farmers is due primarily to a blind but absolutely justified determination to keep those lands as white man's countries.

In Africa, south of the Sahara, the density of the native population will prevent the establishment of any purely white communities, except at the southern extremity of the continent and possibly on portions of the plateaux of eastern Africa. The stoppage of famines and wars and the abolition of the slave trade, while dictated by the noblest impulses of humanity, are suicidal to the white man. Upon the removal of these natural checks negroes multiply so rapidly that there will not be standing room on the continent for white men, unless, perchance, the lethal sleeping sickness, far more fatal to blacks than to whites, should run its course unchecked.

In South Africa a community of Dutch and English extraction is developing. Here the only difference is one of language. English, being a world tongue, will inevitably prevail over the Dutch patois called "Taal." This Frisian dialect, as a matter of fact, is closer to old Saxon, or rather Kentish, than any living continental tongue, and the blood of the North Hollander is extremely close to that of the Anglo-Saxon of England. The English and the Dutch will merge in a common type just as they did two hundred years ago in the colony of New York. They must stand together if they are to maintain any part of Africa as a white man's country, because they are confronted with the menace of a large black Bantu population which will drive out the whites unless the problem is bravely faced.

The only possible solution is to establish large colonies for the negroes and to allow them outside of them only as laborers, and not as settlers. There must be ultimately a black South Africa and a white South Africa side by side, or else a pure black Africa from the Cape to the cataracts of the Nile.

In upper Canada, as in the United States up to the time of our Civil War, the white population was purely Nordic. The Dominion is, of course, handicapped by the presence of an indigestible mass of French-Canadians, largely from Brittany and of Alpine origin, although the habitant patois is an archaic Norman of the time of Louis XIV. These Frenchmen were granted freedom of language and religion by their conquerors, and are now using these privileges to form separatist groups in antagonism to the English population. The Quebec Frenchmen will succeed in seriously impeding the progress of Canada and will succeed even better in keeping themselves a poor and ignorant community of little more importance to the world at large than are the negroes in the South. The selfishness of the Quebec Frenchmen is measured by the fact that in the present war they will not fight for the British Empire, or for France, or even for clerical Belgium, and they are now endeavoring to make use of the military crisis to secure a further extension of their "nationalistic ideals."

Personally the writer believes that the finest and purest type of a Nordic community outside of Europe will develop in northwest Canada. Most of the other countries in which the Nordic race is now settling lie outside of the special environment in which alone it can flourish.

The negroes of the United States, while stationary, were not a serious drag on civilization until, in the last century, they were given the rights of citizenship and were incorporated in the body politic. These negroes brought with them no language or religion or customs of their own which persisted, but adopted all these elements of environment from the dominant race, taking the names of their masters just as to-day the German and Polish Jews are assuming American names. They came for the most part from the coasts of the Bight of Benin, but some of the later ones came from the southeast coast of Africa by way of Zanzibar. They were of various black tribes, but have been from the beginning saturated with white blood.

Looking at any group of negroes in America, it is easy to see that while they are all essentially negroes, whether coal black, brown, or yellow, the great majority of them have varying amounts of Nordic blood in them, which has modified their physical structure without transforming them in any way into white men. This miscegenation was, of course, a frightful disgrace to the dominant race, but its effect on the Nordics has been negligible, for the simple reason that it was confined to white men crossing with negro women, and not the reverse process, which would, of course, have resulted in the infusion of negro blood into the American stock.

The United States of America must be regarded racially as a European colony, and owing to current ignorance of the physical bases of race, one often hears the statement made that native Americans of Colonial ancestry are of mixed ethnic origin. This is not true. At the time of the Revolutionary War the settlers in the thirteen Colonies were not only purely Nordic, but also purely Teutonic, a very large majority being Anglo-Saxon in the most limited meaning of that term. The New England settlers in particular came from those counties of England where the blood was almost purely Saxon, Anglian, and Dane.

New England, during Colonial times and long afterward, was far more Teutonic than old England; that is, it contained a smaller percentage of small, Pre-Nordic brunets. Any one familiar with the native New Englander knows the clean cut face, the high stature and the prevalence of gray and blue eyes and light brown hair, and recognizes that the brunet element is less noticeable there than in the South.

The Southern States were populated also by Englishmen of the purest Nordic type, but there is to-day, except among the mountains, an appreciably larger amount of brunet types than in the North. Virginia is in the same latitude as North Africa, and south of this line no blonds have ever been able to survive in full vigor, chiefly because the actinic rays of the sun are the same regardless of other climatic conditions. These rays beat heavily on the Nordic race and disturb their nervous system, wherever the white man ventures too far from the cold and foggy North.

The remaining Colonial elements, the Holland Dutch, the Palatine Germans, who came over in small numbers to New York and Pennsylvania, were also purely Teutonic, while the French Huguenots who escaped to America were drawn much more largely from the Nordic than from the Alpine or Mediterranean elements of France. The Scotch-Irish, who were numerous on the frontier of the middle Colonies were, of course, of pure Scotch and English blood, although they had resided in Ireland two or three generations. They were quite free from admixture with the earlier Irish from whom they were cut off socially by bitter religious antagonism, and they are not to be considered as "Irish" in any sense.

There was no important immigration of other elements until the middle of the nineteenth century, when Irish Catholic and German immigrants appear for the first time upon the scene.

The Nordic blood was kept pure in the Colonies, because at that time among Protestant peoples there was a strong race feeling, as a result of which half-breeds between the white man and any native type were regarded as natives and not as white men.

There was plenty of mixture with the negroes as the light color of most negroes abundantly testifies, but these mulattoes, quadroons, or octoroons were then and are now universally regarded as negroes.

There was also abundant cross breeding along the frontiers between the white frontiersman and the Indian squaw, but the half-breed was everywhere regarded as a member of the inferior race.

In the Catholic colonies, however, of New France and New Spain, if the half-breed were a good Catholic he was regarded as a Frenchman or a Spaniard, as the case might be. This fact alone gives the clew to many of our colonial wars where the Indians, other than the Iroquois, were persuaded to join the French against the Americans by half-breeds who considered themselves Frenchmen. The Church of Rome has everywhere used its influence to break down racial distinctions. It disregards origins and only requires obedience to the mandates of the universal church. In that lies the secret of the opposition of Rome to all national movements. It is the imperial as contrasted with the nationalistic ideal, and in that respect the inheritance is direct from the Empire.

Race consciousness in the Colonies and in the United States, down to and including the Mexican War, seems to have been very strongly developed among native Americans, and it still remains in full vigor to-day in the South, where the presence of a large negro population forces this question upon the daily attention of the whites.

In New England, however, whether through the decline of Calvinism or the growth of altruism, there appeared early in the last century a wave of sentimentalism, which at that time took up the cause of the negro, and in so doing apparently destroyed, to a large extent, pride and consciousness of race in the North. The agitation over slavery was inimical to the Nordic race, because it thrust aside all national opposition to the intrusion of hordes of immigrants of inferior racial value, and prevented the fixing of a definite American type, such as was clearly appearing in the middle of the century.

The Civil War was fought almost entirely by unalloyed native Americans. The German and Irish immigrants were at that time confined to a few States, and were chiefly mere day laborers and of no social importance. They played no part whatever in the development or policies of the nation, although in the war they contributed a certain number of soldiers to the Northern armies. These Irish and German elements were of Nordic race, and while they did not in the least strengthen the nation either morally or intellectually, they did not impair its physique.

There has been little or no Indian blood taken into the veins of the native American, except in States like Oklahoma and in some isolated families scattered here and there in the Northwest. This particular mixture will play no very important role in future combinations of race on this continent, except in the north of Canada.

The native American has always found, and finds now, in the black men, willing followers who ask only to obey and to further the ideals and wishes of the master race, without trying to inject into the body politic their own views, whether racial, religious, or social. Negroes are never socialists or labor unionists, and as long as the dominant imposes its will on the servient race, and as long as they remain in the same relation to the whites as in the past, the negroes will be a valuable element in the community, but once raised to social equality their influence will be destructive to themselves and to the whites. If the purity of the two races is to be maintained, they cannot continue to live side by side, and this is a problem from which there can be no escape.

The native American by the middle of the nineteenth century was rapidly becoming a distinct type. Derived from the Teutonic part of the British Isles, and being almost purely Nordic, he was on the point of developing physical peculiarities of his own, slightly variant from those of his English forefathers, and corresponding rather with the idealistic Elizabethan than with the materialistic Hanoverian Englishman. The Civil War, however, put a severe, perhaps fatal, check to the development and expansion of this splendid type, by destroying great numbers of the best breeding stock on both sides, and by breaking up the home ties of many more. If the war had not occurred these same men with their descendants would have populated the Western States instead of the racial nondescripts who are now flocking there.

The prosperity that followed the war attracted hordes of newcomers who were welcomed by the native Americans to operate factories, build railroads, and fill up the waste spaces - "developing the country" it was called.

These new immigrants were no longer exclusively members of the Nordic race as were the earlier ones who came of their own impulse to improve their social conditions. The transportation lines advertised America as a land flowing with milk and honey, and the European governments took the opportunity to unload upon careless, wealthy, and hospitable America the sweepings of their jails and asylums. The result was that the new immigration, while it still included many strong elements from the north of Europe, contained a large and increasing number of the weak, the broken, and the mentally crippled of all races drawn from the lowest stratum of the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans, together with hordes of the wretched, submerged populations of the Polish Ghettos.

With a pathetic and fatuous belief in the efficacy of American institutions and environment to reverse or obliterate immemorial hereditary tendencies, these newcomers were welcomed and given a share in our land and prosperity. The American taxed himself to sanitate and educate these poor helots, and as soon as they could speak English, encouraged them to enter into the political life, first of municipalities, and then of the nation.

The result is showing plainly in the rapid decline in the birth rate of native Americans because the poorer classes of Colonial stock, where they still exist, will not bring children into the world to compete in the labor market with the Slovak, the Italian, the Syrian, and the Jew. The native American is too proud to mix socially with them, and is gradually withdrawing from the scene, abandoning to these aliens the land which he conquered and developed. The man of the old stock is being crowded out of many country districts by these foreigners, just as he is to-day being literally driven off the streets of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews. These immigrants adopt the language of the native American; they wear his clothes; they steal his name; and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals, and while he is being elbowed out of his own home the American looks calmly abroad and urges on others the suicidal ethics which are exterminating his own race.

As to what the future mixture will be it is evident that in large sections of the country the native American will entirely disappear. He will not intermarry with inferior races, and he cannot compete in the sweat shop and in the street trench with the newcomers. Large cities from the days of Rome, Alexandria, and Byzantium have always been gathering points of diverse races, but New York is becoming a cloaca gentium which will produce many amazing racial hybrids and some ethnic horrors that will be beyond the powers of future anthropologists to unravel.

One thing is certain: in any such mixture, the surviving traits will be determined by competition between the lowest and most primitive elements and the specialized traits of Nordic man; his stature, his light colored eyes, his fair skin and blond hair, his straight nose, and his splendid fighting and moral qualities, will have little part in the resultant mixture.

The "survival of the fittest" means the survival of the type best adapted to existing conditions of environment, to-day the tenement and factory, as in Colonial times they were the clearing of forests, fighting Indians, farming the fields, and sailing the Seven Seas. From the point of view of race it were better described as the "survival of the unfit."

This review of the colonies of Europe would be discouraging were it not that thus far little attention has been paid to the suitability of a new country for the particular colonists who migrate there. The process of sending out colonists is as old as mankind itself, and probably in the last analysis most of the chief races of the world, certainly most of the inhabitants of Europe, represent the descendants of successful colonists.

Success in colonization depends on the selection of new lands and climatic conditions in harmony with the immemorial requirements of the incoming race. The adjustment of each race to its own peculiar habitat is based on thousands of years of rigid selection which cannot be safely ignored. A certain isolation and freedom from competition with other races, for some centuries at least, is also important, so that the colonists may become habituated to their new surroundings.

Continue on to Part 2, Chapter 8 The Expansion Of The Nordics