“Gobineau on China : race theory, the 'yellow peril', and the critique of modernity” (Publication, 1999)
Year
1999
Text
Blue, Gregory. Gobineau on China : race theory, the 'yellow peril', and the critique of modernity. In : Journal of world history ; vol. 10, no 1 (1999). (Gob2)
Type
Publication
Mentioned People (1)
Gobineau, Joseph Arthur de
(Ville-d'Avray 1816-1882 Turin) : Diplomat, Schriftsteller, Dramatiker, Historiker
Subjects
Literature : Occident : France
Chronology Entries (1)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1853-1856.4 |
Gobineau, Joseph Arthur de. Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines [ID D20711]. Sekundärliteratur. Quellen : Biot, Edouard. Le Tcheou-li ; ou, rites des Tcheo [ID D2116]. Burnes, Alexander. Travels into Bokhara ; being the account of a journey from India to Cabool, Tartary, and Persia. (London : J. Murray, 1934). Davis, John Francis. The Chinese [ID D2017]. Gaubil, Antoine ; Guignes, Joseph de. Le Chou-king [ID D1856]. Gaubil, Antoine. Traité de la chronologie chinoise, divisé en trois parties [ID D1923]. Huc, Evariste Régis. Souvenirs d'un voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet et la Chine [ID D2107]. Humboldt, Alexander von. Asie centrale : recherches sur les chaines des montagnes et la climatologie comparée. (Paris : Gide, 1843). Julien, Stanislas. [Texte]. Julien, Stanislas. Le Tcheou-li ; ou, rites des Tcheo [ID D2116]. Lassen, Christian. Indische Alterthumskunde [ID D20714]. Manava-Dharma-Sastra (1833). Mohl, Julius von. Rapport annuel fait à la Société asiatique (1851). Movers, Franz Carl. Die Phönizier : Geschichte der Colonien. T. 2, Bd. 2. Das phönizische Alterthum. (Bonn : Weber, 1850). Neumann, Karl Friedrich. Die Sinologen und ihre Werke [ID D20713]. Pickering, Charles. United States exploring expedition. (Boston, Mass. : Little, Brown & Co., 1854). Pickering, Charles. The races of man, and their geographical distribution. (Philadelphia : C. Sherman, 1848). Prémare, Joseph Henri-Marie de. Ritter, Carl. Die Erdkunde im Verhältniss zur Natur und zur Geschichte des Menschen [ID D20715]. Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von. Philosophie der Geschichte [ID D17552]. Gregory Blue : Gobineau considered the civilization of China the fifth of the “great human civilizations” to have resulted from the initiative of the white race. Together with India it was especially important in his understanding of world history, because he thought the antiquity and continuity of these two civilizations allowed him to demonstrate the permanence of racial traits. It was his contention that the impetus for Chinese civilization came in the mid-third millennium B.C.E. from a group of Aryans of the kshatriya caste of nobles and warriors who left India after rebelling against the brahmans, soon after the latter had established themselves as the socially preeminent caste. Gobineau insisted that the cradle of Chinese civilization had been in south China, although—apparently unaware of any discrepancy—he asserted elsewhere that it had originated in Henan. By Gobineau's time, Western writers had long associated China with a patriarchal social order. Although commonly condemned by liberals and socialists of the day, patriarchy was a system with which Gobineau was in sympathy. To him it had been the natural and laudable form of government in the primeval white society, and he imagined that migrating branches of the white race had carried it with them, adapting it to local circumstances as they established new civilizations. Among Aryans, he believed the authority of the father of a family (the "complete man") was compatible with respecting the individuality of each family member, but Gobineau claimed that individuality was absent among the "inert multitudes of yellow and black peoples. In China, in turn, the patriarchal principle of government was translated into a "peaceful despotism" suited to the "Malay disposition" with its characteristic patience and submissiveness to the law, its capacity to "grasp the advantages of a regular and coordinated [State] organization," and its desire for an "exclusively material wellbeing. Thus, in Gobineau's interpretation of China, the form of rule there was patriarchal because the original rulers had been Aryan, and government was absolute because it had been established by conquest. In practice, however, "the absolutism of the sovereign...was generally enclosed within narrow bounds because Malay sensibility did not call for excessively great demonstrations of arrogance." Theoretically, the emperor could do what he liked, but any real attempt to start an ambitious program would meet with grave difficulties, for the nation would become agitated, the mandarins would make representations, and ministers would decry any innovations before the throne. The emperor would be isolated and would ultimately face an insurrection. In other words, "the absolute authority of the emperors was limited by public opinion and by the manners [of the country]; and it is thus that one has always seen tyranny appear in China as an accident that is constantly detested and repressed and that is hardly ever perpetuated because the natural character of the governed race does not lend itself to it. Gobineau constructs a civilizational portrait out of materials drawn from indigenous historiography and conventional Western analyses of China, and he then purports to explain each component and the overall portrayal with his allegedly higher level theory of racial determination. Since he discerned contributions by all three of his secondary races to the composition of Chinese society, and since his theory ascribed to those three taken together the total range of human traits, he conveniently allowed himself a maximum of flexibility for "explaining" Chinese civilization. If this flexibility was convenient, it also fostered various inconsistencies that belied the apparent "logic" of the analysis. Gobineau bought into the conventional notion of China's immutability when he referred to the people as politically and cultur-allyhomogeneous and to the state as displaying "governmental principles that have never changed." He nevertheless did allow that one major historical transformation had occurred (in accordance with the "racial laws" of history) at the outset of the imperial era. The invasions later on of the Mongols and Manchus, though explainable as due to the presence of certain dynamic Aryan elements among the conquering peoples, were mainly only infusions of "the Yellow type." As such they brought with them "almost nothing new" to China. It followed that those conquests were not comparable to the Germanic invasions, which had reinjected "noble" blood into Europe from the fifth to the tenth century. What, then, were for Gobineau the characteristics of Chinese society in the last 2,000 years? The form of mild patriarchal rule he attributed to it has already been considered. Another trait frequently identified in the sinological literature as Chinese, and one that he found "natural" because of the society's yellow/Malay foundation, was an indomitably materialistic orientation. In his view this trait determined that in China political priority was given to government administration rather than to war and diplomacy, the two areas in which Western rulers sought glory. The country's racial character dictated a primal urge for political stability, which in turn required that food be grown in abundance; that agriculture and industry receive "perpetual encouragements"; that everyone "should be able to clothe, feed and house themselves"; and that a "solid and profound tranquility should be preserved as the supreme means for attaining these ends." Another aspect of Chinese life that was well attested in Western convention was the government's famous tolerance toward various philosophical and religious doctrines. This Gobineau explained as following from the people's alleged materialism. Happiness for the Chinese, he maintained, consisted of simply having enough to eat and sufficient clothes to wear. That was why the government could afford to allow the most unnatural doctrines to be preached as long as they had no social consequences. It could even allow such monstrosities as freedom of the press and of association because the "exclusively utilitarian" nature of the Chinese people defused any destabilizing effect these institutions might otherwise have had. As long as they had thematerial necessities, no Chinese would "bother to confront police truncheons for the greater glory of a political abstraction." In Gobineau's eyes, the entrenchment of liberties and a propensity for extravagant grand theories were features of Hindu society that followed from the mixture of white and black components in the Indian population. In China, by contrast, the strength of yellow and black components determined that the civilization's greatest achievements were attained at the level of material organization. Gobineau granted that in this domain China surpassed the Roman empire, and even modern Europe, though he held that it did so "without beauty and without dignity," as befitted its racial character. Though the Chinese population was renowned for being peaceful and submissive, it was so only because it was "lacking in sentiments beyond the humblest notion of physical utility." Reversing the Enlightenment esteem for the simplicity of Chinese classical thought, Gobineau reasoned that Chinese "religion is a résumé of practices and maxims strongly reminiscent of what the moralists of Geneva and their educational books are pleased to recommend as the nec plus ultra of the good: economy, moderation, prudence, the art of making a profit and never a loss. Gobineau advanced similarly disdainful opinions of Chinese manners and Chinese literature, the allegedly low condition of which he naturally saw as deriving from the same racial principles discussed above. Chinese manners were, accordingly, nothing but "perpetual cant," without similarity to the medieval European forms of courtesy that represented the freeman's grave deference to his superiors, his "noble benevolence" toward his equals, and his "affectionate condescension to his inferiors." In China materialism dictated instead that politeness amounted to "nothing more than social obligation, which, taking its source in the grossest egoism, translates into an abject prostration toward superiors, a ridiculous fighting over proprieties with equals, and an arrogance with inferiors that grows in proportion to the lowness of their rank." Chinese courtesy, in other words, was a for-malist invention for keeping everyone in their place, rather than an "inspiration of the heart" as in the West. In addition, the Chinese lacked a sense of proportion, for among them, Gobineau thought, the trivialities of everyday life were as rigorously regulated by law as were matters of importance. Although the Chinese esteemed their literature highly, in Gobineau's eyes it was instead a "powerful force of stagnation," partly because of its incorporation into the government examination system, but also largely because of its inherent characteristics. Again echoing Herder, he scorned Chinese literature as marred by all sorts of "puerile" embellishments. The best Chinese literary forms were descriptions of nature and the novel, because in these the yellow capacity for observation and subtlety could be expressed. Otherwise, Chinese literature had nothing to recommend it. Chinese theater was "flat" and "ill-conceived." Chinese poetry that attempted to capture feelings only succeeded in being "ridiculous." Chinese philosophy consisted of nothing but "commonplace maxims" formulated in a "puerilely obscure" and "drily didactic manner." The "great [Chinese] scientific works" were simply "verbose compilations" lacking a critical dimension. That was only to be expected because, as he put it, "the spirit of the yellow race is neither profound nor insightful [sagace] enough to attain this quality [i.e., scientific excellence] reserved for the white race." That is to say, yellow people might have been able to make useful drawings of natural objects, since these require patience and observation, but the Chinese lacked a capacity for "general theories." In addition, since "tradition is all-powerful in China," any new idea that might emerge is immediately the object of indignation; and in any case those literati who are occasionally taken by a creative urge fall immediately into "inanity" when this happens. For him China was an essentially "democratic" civilization because the central institution was the mandarinate, which the imperial examination system made accessible to everyone. The mediocrity and stagnation of Chinese literature he saw as going together with the government's promotion of widespread popular education. From his antiprogressive standpoint, and giving his historical terminology a medical diagnostic twist, he described the Chinese state-sponsored program of Confucian civic education as being in a "more advanced" state than that of the West—a piece of irony that implicitly accused the Western reader, while simultaneously damning the Chinese. More pointedly, he went on to describe the alleged loss of Aryan independence completed by Qin Shi Huangdi as "a fact absolutely similar to what took place, chez nous, in 1789, when the innovating spirit saw as its first necessity the destruction of the ancient territorial subdivisions [of France]." Especially during the last years of his life, Gobineau became consumed with the idea that Chinese armies under Russian command would overrun Europe and destroy white civilization. By 1880 he was even suggesting that the struggle against socialism in Europe was a secondary matter because of the imminent prospect of an epoch-changing Chinese invasion. |
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Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2000- | Asien-Orient-Institut Universität Zürich | Organisation / AOI |
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