Arthur de Gobineau

French diplomat and writer known for racial theories (1816–1882)

Fame55.8
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France rank#51

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Fame55.8
Momentum0.2
France rank#51
Writers rank#225
Wikipedia16.6K

Lived 1816–1882, aged 66France

France WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
48 languages
Cross-language footprint
Rank in France
#51
Writers
Era
1816–1882
Aged 66
Awards
6
recognised works

Summary

Updated 2026-06-10

He gave 19th-century white supremacy its foundational text — a French aristocrat who dressed up caste anxiety as racial science and convinced himself that nobles were genetically Aryan. His readers in America and Germany heard the louder message.

Biography

About

Gobineau was born into an aristocratic family under the Ancien Régime and spent his life mourning its loss, a Legitimist who despised the French Revolution and the democratic churn that followed. In the wake of the 1848 revolutions, he published An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, arguing that aristocrats were superior to commoners because they carried purer Aryan blood, untainted by interbreeding with inferior races. France ignored him. Pro-slavery Americans like Josiah C. Nott stripped a thousand pages from his work — including his contempt for their own mixed population — and pub…

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