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Title: Race and nationality
Author: Franz Boas
Release date: September 19, 2025 [eBook #76900]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: American Association for International Conciliation, 1915
Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Daniel Lowe, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RACE AND NATIONALITY ***
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.
On account of the peculiar position of the blond type, it has been
pre-eminently identified with the so-called Aryan race. As is well
known, most of the languages of Europe are derived from one ancient
form of speech,--the parental Aryan language. Slavic, Teutonic, and
Romance languages are the most important modern divisions of this
group in Europe, to which Greek, Celtic, Lithuanian, and Albanian also
belong. Among European languages, only Finnish and its relatives on the
Baltic, Magyar, Turkish, and Basque, do not belong to this extended
group. Aryan languages are spoken by people of the most diverse racial
types; nevertheless there are scientists who try to identify the blond
north-European with the ancient pure Aryan, and who claim for the race
pre-eminent hereditary gifts, because the people who at present and in
our concept are the leaders of the world speak Aryan languages.
Scientific proof of these contentions cannot be given. They are rather
fancies of north-European dreamers, based on the complaisant love of
the achievements of the blondes. No one has ever proved either that all
the Aryans of the earliest times were blondes, or that people speaking
other languages may not have been blond, too; and nobody would be
able to show that the great achievements of mankind were due to blond
thinkers. On the contrary, the men to whom we are indebted for the
basic advance of civilization belong to the dark-complexioned human
types of the Orient, Greece, and Italy, and not to our blond ancestors.
How deep and emotional a hold this idea has in the minds of some
scientists appears when some investigators try to show us that Christ
cannot have been a Jew by descent, but must have been an Aryan.
THE GREAT BLOND ARYAN--A FICTION
The idea of the great blond Aryan, the leader of mankind, is the result
of self-admiration, that emotional thinkers have tried to sustain by
imaginative reasoning. It has no foundation in observed fact. This,
however, does not decrease the emotional value of the fiction that
has taken hold of minds wherever the Teutonic, German, or Anglo-Saxon
type--however it may be called--prevails.
It is not the pre-eminence of the blonde alone that appeals to the
fancy in northwest-European countries: all over Europe we find the idea
of racial purity, and of the existence of certain features inherent
in each race that make it superior to all others; while it is assumed
that the mixed, “mongrel” races are doomed to permanent inferiority.
This notion prevails among ourselves with equal force, for we shake our
heads gravely over the ominous influx of “inferior” races from eastern
Europe. Inferior by heredity? No. Socially different? Yes, on account
of the environment in which they have lived, and therefore different
from ourselves, and not easily subject to change provided they are
allowed to cluster together indefinitely. Equally strong is our fear of
the mongrelization of the American people by intermixtures between the
northwest-European and other European types.
Scientific investigation does not countenance the assumption that in
any one part of Europe a people of pure descent or of a pure racial
type is found, and careful inquiry has failed completely to reveal any
inferiority of mixed European types.
TYPE AND RACE DO NOT COINCIDE
In our imagination the local racial types of Europe have been
identified with the modern nations, and thus the supposed hereditary
characteristics of the races have been confused with national
characteristics. An identification of racial type, of language, and of
nationality has been made, that has gained an exceedingly strong hold
on our imagination. In vain sober scientific thought has remonstrated
against this identification; the idea is too firmly rooted. Even if it
is true that the blond type is found at present pre-eminently among
Teutonic people, it is not confined to them alone. Among the Finns,
Poles, French, North Italians, not to speak of the North African
Berbers and the Kurds of western Asia, there are many individuals of
this type. The heavy-set, dark East-European type is common to many of
the Slavic peoples of eastern Europe, to the Germans of Austria and
southern Germany, to the North Italians, and to the French of the Alps
and of central France. The Mediterranean type is spread widely over
Spain, Italy, Greece, and the coast of Asia Minor, without regard to
national boundaries.
In western Europe, types are distributed in strata that follow one
another from north to south,--in the north the blonde, in the center a
dark, short-headed type, in the south the slightly built Mediterranean
type.
_National boundaries in central Europe, on the other hand, run north
and south: and so we find the northern French, Belgian, Hollander,
German, and Russian to be about the same in type and descent; the
central French, South German, Swiss, North Italian, Austrian, Servian,
and central Russian, to be all the same variety of man; and the
southern French, to be closely related to the types of the eastern and
western Mediterranean area._
At the present moment the relation of German and Slav is of principal
interest. During the period of Teutonic migrations, in the first few
centuries of our era, the Slavs settled in the whole region from which
Teutonic tribes had moved away. They occupied the whole of what is now
eastern Germany. In the Middle Ages, with the growth of the German
Empire, a slow backward movement set in. Germans settled as colonists
in Slavic territory, and by degrees German speech prevailed over the
Slavic. In Germany, survivals of the gradual process may be found in a
few remote localities where Slavic speech still persists. As by contact
with the more advanced Germans the cultural and economic conditions
of the Slav improved, his resistance to Germanization became greater
and greater,--earliest among the Czechs and Poles, later in the other
Slavic groups.
This process has led to the present distribution of languages, which
expresses a fossilization of German colonization in the east, and
illustrates in a most striking way the penetration of peoples. Poland
and part of Russia, Slavonic and Magyar territories, are interspersed
with small German settlements, which are the more sparse and scattered
the farther east they are located, the more continuous the nearer they
lie to Germany.
With the increased economic and cultural strength of the Slav, the
German lost his ability to impose his mode of life upon him, and with
it his power to assimilate the numerically stronger people in its own
home. But by blood all these people, no matter what their speech, are
the same.
In short, _there is no war of races in Europe_; for in every single
nationality concerned in the present struggle the various elements
of the European population are represented, and arrayed against the
same elements as grouped together in another nationality. The conflict
has nothing whatever to do with racial descent. The so-called racial
antipathies are feelings that have grown up on another basis and have
been given a fictitious racial interpretation.
If we deny the presence of racial contrasts, it may not be amiss to
say a word on the fact that we may distinguish with more or less
uncertainty individuals that belong to distinct nationalities. This
common experience might seem contradictory to what has been said
before; but we form concepts of national types partly from essential
elements of the form of the body, partly from the mannerisms of wearing
hair and beard, and also from the characteristic expressions and
motions of the body, which are determined not so much by hereditary
causes as by habit. On the whole, the latter are more impressive than
the former; and among the nations that are concerned in the present
struggle, no fundamental traits of the body occur that belong to one to
the exclusion of the others.
It is clear that the term _race_ is only a disguise of the idea of
_nationality_, which has really very, very little to do with racial
descent; and that the passions that have been let loose are those of
national enmities, not of racial antipathies.
If community of racial descent is not the basis of nationality, is it
community of language?
When we glance at the national aspirations that have characterized a
large part of the nineteenth century, community of language might
seem to be the background of national life. It touches the most
sympathetic chords in our hearts. Italians worked for the overthrow
of all the small local and great foreign interests that were opposed
to the national unity of all Italian-speaking people. German patriots
strove for the federation of the German-speaking people in one empire.
The struggles in the Balkans are largely due to a desire for national
independence according to the limits of speech. The Poles are longing
for a re-establishment of their state which is to embrace all those of
Polish tongue.
WITHOUT THE BOND OF LANGUAGE
Still this does not comprise the whole of nationalism, for no less
ardent is the patriotism of bilingual Belgium and of trilingual
Switzerland. Even here in America we see that the bond of tongue is
not the only one. Else we should feel that there is no reason for a
division between Canada and the United States, and that the political
ties between western Canada and French Quebec must be artificial.
Neither would it be intelligible why modern Germany should never have
pursued the policy of unifying all German-speaking peoples in Europe,
why she should not covet the large German provinces of Austria, and
should patiently witness the forcible Russianization of the German
towns in the Baltic provinces and the Magyarization of the Germans in
Hungary.
Neither the bonds of blood nor those of language alone make a nation.
It is rather the community of emotional life that rises from our
every-day habits, from the forms of our thoughts, feelings, and
actions, which constitute the medium in which every individual can
unfold freely his activities.
Language and nation are so often identified, because we feel that among
a people that uses the same language every one can find the widest
field for unrestricted activity. Added to this is the powerful idea
of political unity, which emphasizes the interests of the citizen as
opposed to those of the foreigners. These beliefs combine to create a
sense of national unity. Nevertheless it is perfectly clear that there
is no individual, nor any group of individuals, that represents the
national ideal. It is rather an abstraction based on the current forms
of thought, feeling, and action,--an abstraction of high emotional
value, that is further enhanced by the consciousness of political power.
It is well to bear in mind that nationality is not necessarily based
on unity of speech; for when the same type of cultural ideals prevails
in a polyglottal area, in which each group is too weak to give to the
individual a free field of action, this can be attained only by the
development of a union of the independent groups. Those who claim on _a
priori_ ground that there cannot be any Austrian patriotism on account
of the polyglottal mixture that is found in the empire, might do well
to consider that during the past seventy years a co-ordination of the
various linguistic groups has slowly developed. Against the wishes of
the Monarchy, Hungary has gained its independence of German domination;
and during the last few decades the Government of Austria itself, much
against the clamor of the German element, has given due recognition to
the wishes of the Slavic population. In all this we see the beginning
of a new national life, probably the only one that can lead to a free
unfolding of human activity in this region that is split up like no
other part of Europe.
The attitude of Italy in the present situation illustrates also that
the linguistic bond is not the only source of national aspirations.
While national unity of the Italian-speaking people is their avowed
aim, those Italians who have cast their lot with Switzerland are
willingly left to themselves. In other areas the ardor with which unity
is sought depends upon the historic past. The Italians under Austrian
rule appeal most strongly to the Italian imagination, and Austria is
reaping her reward for long-continued oppression. This has taken such
strong hold of the Italian mind, that the French encroachments in the
west, and Mazzini’s condemnation of the Third French Republic for not
restoring the lost territory, seem to have been forgotten.
For the full development of his faculties, the individual needs the
widest possible field in which to live and act according to his modes
of thought and inner feeling. Since, in most cases, the opportunity
is given among a group that possesses unity of speech, we feel
full sympathy with the intense desire to throw down the artificial
barriers of small political units. This process has characterized
the development of modern nations, and is now active in part of
southeastern Europe.
When, however, these limits are overstepped, and a fictitious racial
or alleged national unit is set up that has no existence in actual
conditions, the free unfolding of powers, for which we are striving,
is liable to become an excuse for ambitious lust for power. When
France dreamt of a union of all Latin people in a Pan-Latin union
under her leadership, the legitimate limits of natural development
were lost sight of for the sake of national ambition. If Russia
promotes a Pan-Slavistic propaganda among the diverse peoples, solely
on the ground that the Slavs are linguistically related, and assumes
a fictitious common racial origin, the actual usefulness of the
nationalistic idea is lost sight of, and it is made the cover for the
desire of expansion of power.
THE WRONG SIDE OF NATIONALISM
There is no doubt that the idea of nationality has been a creative
force, making possible the fuller development of individual powers by
widening the field of individual activity, and by setting definite
ideals to large co-operating masses; but we feel with Fichte and
Mazzini that the political power of a nation is important only when the
national unit is the carrier of ideals that are of value to mankind.
Together with the positive, creative side of nationalism, there has
developed everywhere another one, which forms the basis of the passions
that are blinding the people of Europe to the high aims of humanity.
Instead of seeing in each nation one of the members of mankind that
contributes in its own way toward the advance of civilization,
an aggressive intolerance of all other units has grown up. It is
strengthened by the inadaptability of governmental machinery, which
favors national isolation.
On a larger scale the conditions are repeated now that less than a
century ago prevented the ready formation of modern nations. The
narrow-minded local interests of cities and other small political
units resisted unification or federation on account of the supposed
conflicts between their interests and ideals and those of other
units of comparable size. The governmental organization strengthened
the tendency to isolation, and the unavoidable, ever-present desire
of self-preservation of the existing order stood in the way of
amalgamation. It was only after long years of agitation and of bloody
struggle that the larger idea prevailed.
Those of us who recognize in the realization of national ideals a
definite advance that has benefited mankind cannot fail to see that the
task before us at the present time is a repetition of the process of
nationalization on a larger scale; not with a view to levelling down
all local differences, but with the avowed purpose of making them all
subserve the same end.
The federation of nations is the next necessary step in the evolution
of mankind.
It is the expansion of the fundamental idea underlying the organization
of the United States, of Switzerland, and of Germany. The weakness of
the modern peace movement lies in this, that it is not sufficiently
clear and radical in its demand, for its logical aim cannot be an
arbitration of disagreements. It must be the recognition of common aims
of at least all the nations of European descent. The time is obviously
not ripe for demanding an expansion of this idea over the productive
members of the non-European races of mankind.
Such federation of nations is not a Utopian idea, any more than
nationalism was a century ago. In fact, the whole development of
mankind shows that this condition is destined to come. In the
earliest period of social development, when human beings lived in
small, scattered groups, the unit in which community of interest was
recognized was the small horde, and every outsider was considered as
specifically distinct and as an enemy who must be killed for the sake
of self-preservation. By slow degrees the size of the horde increased
and they formed themselves into larger units. The distinction between
the members of the tribe and the foreigner was no longer considered as
a specific one, although the idea continued to prevail that it was of
foremost interest to protect the fellow-tribesman against the foreigner.
Progress has been slow, but almost steady, in the direction of
expanding the political units from hordes to tribes, from tribes to
small states, confederations, and nations. The concept of the foreigner
as a specifically distinct being has been so modified that we are
beginning to see in him a member of mankind.
Enlargement of circles of association, and equalization of rights of
distinct local communities, have been so consistently the _general_
tendency of human development, that we may look forward confidently to
its consummation.
It is obvious that the standards of ethical conduct must be quite
distinct as between those who have grasped this ideal and those who
still believe in the preservation of isolated nationality in opposition
to all others. In order to form a fair judgment of the motives of
action of the leaders of European nations at the present time, we
should bear in mind that in all countries the standards of national
ethics, as cultivated by means of national education, are opposed to
this wider view. Devotion to the nation is taught as the paramount
duty, and it is instilled into the minds of the young in such a form
that with it grows up and is perpetuated the feeling of rivalry and of
hostility against all other nations.
Conditions in Europe are intelligible only when we remember that by
education patriotism is surrounded by a halo of sanctity, and that
national self-preservation is considered the first duty.
If our public conscience is hardly strong enough to exact the faithful
performance of the terms of a treaty in which only commercial interests
are at stake, if we are restrained with some difficulty from aggression
for the sake of economic advantage, it is at least intelligible why
a government that sees the very existence of the nation endangered
should, in a conflict of duties, reluctantly decide to set the safety
of the nation for which it is responsible higher than the performance
of a treaty inherited from a previous generation.
We must acknowledge that in such a case the demands of national and
international duty are hopelessly at variance, and what line of action
is chosen depends upon the conception of responsibility and upon the
value given to the preservation of national existence.
NATIONALISM IN AMERICA
Since our own political interest in the war in Europe is weak, we stand
naturally nearer to the standpoint of international morals and are
inclined to misinterpret the motives that sway the nations at war. We
should not deceive ourselves. It is only lack of immediate interest
that determines our attitude. Owing to our more isolated position on
the Western Hemisphere and to the great size of our country, we are
not so much exposed to the conflicts between our interests, real or
imaginary, and those of other nations.
Still we are no less eager than the nations of Europe to instil the
idea of the preponderance of national interest over human interest into
the minds of the young. We, too, teach rather the lessons of aggressive
nationalism than those of national idealism, expansion rather than
inner development, the admiration of warlike, heroic deeds rather
than of the object for which they were performed. Given a national
conflict, and the same unreasoning passions will sway our people that
are carrying Europe to the brink of ruin.
Those who look forward to the federation of nations must work together
to teach their ideals to the young, to teach that no nation has the
right to impose its individuality upon another one, that no war is
justifiable except for the defence of the threatened integrity of our
ideals.
Transcriber’s Note
Some inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have
been retained.
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text. Small capitals
changed to all capitals.
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