INTERNATIONAL CONCILIATION SPECIAL BULLETIN RACE AND NATIONALITY By FRANZ BOAS Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University JANUARY, 1915 American Association for International Conciliation Sub-Station 84 (407 West 117th Street) New York City The editor of _Everybody’s Magazine_, in which this article appeared in briefer form in November, 1914, has kindly granted permission for its republication in this series. RACE AND NATIONALITY The struggle that is now devastating Europe has been described as an unavoidable war of races, as an outcome of the innate hostility between Teutonic, Slav, and Latin peoples, that can never be overcome by argument and reason, because it is due to deep-seated “racial instinct.” If this were so, we might despair of the future of mankind; for beyond this conflict would arise others without end, as wider and closer international intercourse develops and brings more emphatically into consciousness racial differences like those between Latin-American and Anglo-American, East Indian and European, Mongol or Malay and European. If this view were correct, the so-called “racial instinct” would perpetuate wars of extermination until one race alone survived. It is true that in our own political and social life the feeling of racial solidarity finds strong expression in our behavior towards Mongol and Negro. It is equally true that in Europe the Slavic world is moved to its depths by the Pan-Slavistic idea; that Germany has been carried far on a wave of admiration for the excellence of the great Teutonic race, and that England rests serene on the unshaken conviction of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon; and yet the emotional value of these ideas does not make clear their rational values. The term “racial instinct” expresses the ideas that there are definite, insurmountable antipathies based on differences of appearance, and that certain hereditary mental characteristics belong to each type of man. In Europe, the occurrence of local types has led to the concept of distinct races, identified with certain national groups: the blond representing the Teuton; the heavy, darker type, the Slav; and the Mediterranean, the typical Spaniard or Italian.