Lothrop Stoddard

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Lothrop Stoddard.
Lothrop Stoddard.

Lothrop Stoddard (June 29, 1883–May 1, 1950), born Theodore Lothrop Stoddard, was an American political theorist, historian, eugenicist, and anti-immigration advocate who wrote a number of prominent books of early 20th-century scientific racism.

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[edit] Biography

Stoddard was born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1883. He attended Harvard College, graduating magna cum laude in 1905, and studied Law at Boston University until 1908. Stoddard received a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1914, and was also an avid stamp collector. He published many unashamedly racist books on what he saw as the peril of immigration, his most famous being The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy in 1920. In this book he presented a view of the world situation pertaining to race focusing concern on the coming population explosion among the "colored" peoples of the world and the way in which "white world-supremacy" was being lessened in the wake of World War I and the collapse of colonialism.

Stoddard's analysis divided world politics and situations in to "white", "yellow", "black", and "brown" peoples and their interactions.
Stoddard's analysis divided world politics and situations in to "white", "yellow", "black", and "brown" peoples and their interactions.

Stoddard argued race and heredity were the guiding factors of history and civilization, and that the elimination or absorption of the "white" race by "colored" races would result in the destruction of Western civilization. Like Madison Grant, Stoddard divided the white race into three main divisions: Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean. He considered all three to be of good stock, and far above the quality of the colored races, but argued that the Nordic was the greatest of the three and needed to be preserved by way of eugenics. Unlike Grant, Stoddard was less concerned with which varieties of European people were superior to others (Nordic theory), but was more concerned with what he called "bi-racialism," seeing the world as being composed of simply black and white races. In the years after the Great Migration and World War I, Grant's racial theory would fall out of favor in the U.S. in favor of a model closer to Stoddard's. (Guterl 2004)

Stoddard's racial theories would help depopularize Grant's Nordicism and usher in a new kind of racial thinking, which would later be called "Pan-Aryanism" (Aryanism was the belief in a superior white European race). The post-World War II White Supremacist movement would embrace Pan-Aryanism, as it incorporated all whites into a supposed superior race rather than just Northern Europeans.

Some predictions made in The Rising Tide of Color were accurate, other were not. Accurate ones — not all of which were original to Stoddard or predicated on white supremacy — include: Japan's rise as a major power, a Nippo–American war, a second war in Europe, the overthrowing of African and Asian European colonial, the mass migration of colored peoples to white countries, and, most interestingly, the rise of Islam as a threat to the West, because of Muslim religious fanaticism; (Stoddard was an Islamic scholar and wrote the book, The New World of Islam).

An allusion to the book occurs in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby . Tom Buchanan, the violent, arrogant husband of Daisy Buchanan, the novels principal woman character, is reading a book titled The Rise of the Colored Empires by "this man Goddard" (a combination of Grant's name and Stoddard's). Throughout The Great Gatsby, Tom confusedly espouses Goddard's racial theories; the narrator calls Tom's focus on Goddard's ideas "pathetic."

Stoddard was appointed to the Board of Directors of the American Birth Control League, a forerunner to Planned Parenthood by Margaret Sanger. He was also a member of the American Historical Association, the American Political Science Association, and the Academy of Political Science. Stoddard was a lifelong Unitarian and Republican. During his lifetime, he engaged W.E.B. DuBois in debate on white supremacy and its assertion of the natural inferiority of "colored" races.

In The Revolt Against Civilization (1922) he put forward the theory that civilization places a growing burden on individuals, leading to a growing underclass of individuals who cannot keep up, and a 'ground-swell of revolt'. Stoddard advocated immigration restriction and birth control legislation in order to reduce the numbers of the underclass while promoting the growth of the middle and upper classes. He believed social progress was impossible unless it was guided by a "neo-aristocracy" made up of the most capable individuals and reconciled with the findings of science rather than based on abstract idealism and egalitarianism.

After the passing of the Immigration Act of 1924, which severely limited immigration from southern and eastern Europe, Stoddard urged for white unity and the assimilation of the immigrants in his book "Reforging America." Unlike Madison Grant and others, who only concerned themselves with keeping America racially "Nordic," Stoddard argued the non-Nordic white peoples who were now in the country needed to be Americanized, and believed the country could continue to function so long as it was mostly "white" and retained its Nordic, Anglo-Saxon core. Stoddard argued that there would be a coming racial struggle between "white" civilization and the "colored" world, and believed animosity between white ethnic groups and nationalities had to be diminished if the white race was to survive.

Stoddard authored over two dozen works, most related to race and civilization, echoing the themes of his previous works about the dangers of "colored" peoples against "white" civilization.

During World War II he also wrote Into the Darkness (1940), about the effect of war on Nazi Germany. Stoddard was relatively nonpartisan in his coverage of the Nazi regime, but he did express concern for the welfare of the European Jewish community, foreseeing intense violence against the Jews. He was always wary of and often opposed to the Nazis, despite their common support for eugenics. In "The Rising Tide of Color," Stoddard blasted the ethnic supremacism of the Germans, blaming the "Teutonic imperialists" for the outbreak of the First World War, and the Nazis, of course, simply carried this ethnic supremacism to more extreme ends. He opposed what he saw as the disuniting of the white peoples through intense nationalism within Europe. Nevertheless, after World War II, Stoddard's theories were judged as too closely aligned with those of the Nazis and he suffered a large drop in popularity. (Guterl 2004) His death in 1950 from cancer went almost entirely unreported, despite his previously broad readership and influence. (Fant 2000)

[edit] Bibliography

  • The French Revolution in San Domingo. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1914.
  • Present-day Europe, its National States of Mind. New York: The Century Co., 1917.
  • The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920.
  • The New World of Islam. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921.
  • The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922.
  • Racial Realities in Europe. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924.
  • Social Classes in Post-War Europe. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925.
  • The Story of Youth. New York: Cosmopolitan book corporation, 1928.
  • Luck, Your Silent Partner. New York: H. Liveright, 1929.
  • Master of Manhattan, the life of Richard Croker. Londton: Longmans, Green and Co., 1931.
  • Europe and Our Money. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1932
  • Lonely America. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, and Co., 1932.
  • Clashing Tides of Color. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935.
  • Into the Darkness: Nazi Germany Today. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, inc., 1940.

[edit] See also

[edit] Works online

[edit] References

  • Guterl, Matthew Pratt. 2004. The Color of Race in America, 1900-1940. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Fant, Jr. Gene C. (2000) "Stoddard, Lothrop", American National Biography Online.

[edit] Modern reviews