The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European historyGrant, Madison
History
The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history
Grant, Madison
Ethnology -- Europe
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 conqueror 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 swarthy 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 of the invaders 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, who
fill up waste places and take to the lowly tasks which the lords of the
land despise, thus gradually occupying the country and literally
breeding out their masters.
The former catastrophe happened in the declining days of the Roman
Republic and the south Italians of to-day are very largely descendants
of the 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
represents the descendants of the Wends, who first appear about the
commencement of the Christian era and who by the sixth century had
penetrated 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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