Georges Vacher de Lapouge

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Georges Vacher de Lapouge
Born (1854-12-12)12 December 1854
Neuville-de-Poitou, Vienne
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Poitiers, Vienne
Nationality French
Influences Arthur de Gobineau, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Alphonse de Candolle, Ernst Haeckel, Francis Galton
Influenced Otto Ammon, Madison Grant, Carlos C. Closson, Luis Huerta, Jon Alfred Mjøen, Eugen Dühring, Ludwig Woltmann
Spouse Marie-Albertine Hindré
Children Claude Vacher de Lapouge

Count Georges Vacher de Lapouge (12 December 1854 – 20 February 1936) was a French anthropologist. First a magistrate, then a librarian, he was a theorist of eugenics, racialism and a major figure in the field of anthroposociology.[1] An atheist, anticlerical and militant Marxist socialist, he was one of the founders of Jules Guesde's French Workers' Party before joining the SFIO.

Biography

Born in Neuville-de-Poitou in 1854, Georges Vacher de Lapouge lost his father at the age of twelve. he did not attended elementary school, having learned how to read and write from his mother, Marie-Louise-Augustine Hindré. He was a descendant of François de Lapouge, a companion of Jean Calvin. A student at the Jesuit college in Poitiers in October 1866, then at the lycée — where Louis Liard, his teacher, introduced him to Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin — from 1868 to 1872, he then became a law student and received the gold medal on November 29, 1877 for a 750-page study, De la pétition d'hérédité, presented at the doctoral competition of the Poitiers law faculty.

He received his doctorate in law in 1879, and his thesis was on the Théorie du patrimoine en droit positif généralisé. Beginning a career as a magistrate, he was appointed substitute prosecutor in Niort (1879–1880), public prosecutor in Le Blanc (1880–1881) and in Chambon (1881–1883). He read many works on natural sciences and the theory of evolution, but he remained attached to republican principles and, as president of the Cercle de la Ligue d'Enseignement du Blanc, he did not hesitate to give a lecture on February 6, 1881, entitled "Du rôle de l'instruction chez les peuples libres" (The role of education among free peoples), in which he again praised the progress of the Enlightenment.

Since he did not consider himself suited to the judiciary, he resigned in May 1883 and moved to Paris, where he subsisted by giving private lessons. While preparing for the agrégation de droit, he simultaneously attended the École pratique des hautes études, and learned several languages such as Akkadian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Chinese, and Japanese at the École du Louvre and at School of Anthropology in Paris from 1883 to 1886.

Having failed the agrégation in 1884, he began to publish his research in scholarly journals from 1885–1886, including the Revue générale du droit, de la législation et de la jurisprudence (1885–1886), the Nouvelle revue historique de droit français et étranger (1886), and the Revue d'anthropologie (1886), in which he introduced Francis Galton's eugenics in France, but applied it to his theory of races. Vacher de Lapouge's ideas partly mirror those of Henri de Boulainvilliers (1658–1722), who believed that the Germanic Franks formed the upper class of French society, whereas the Gauls were the ancestors of the peasantry. Race, according to him, thus became a synonym of social class. But, in virtue of heredity, the Homo europaeus intrinsically possessed more qualities than the lower Homo mediterraneus. He added to this concept of races and classes what he termed selectionism, his version of Galton's eugenics. Vacher de Lapouge's "selectionism" had two aims: first, achieving the annihilation of trade unionists, considered as "degenerate"; second, creating types of man each destined to one end, in order to prevent any competition of labour conditions. His anthropology thus aimed at preventing social conflict by establishing a fixed, hierarchical social order.[2][3]

Appointed in 1886 as sub-librarian at the University of Montpellier, he gave, from December 2, and thanks to the support of Liard, then director of higher education, a free course in anthropology at the Faculty of Science, where he developed his ideas on the theory of heredity and social selection. In 1887 and 1888, his lectures were published in the Revue d'anthropologie. However, he did not succeed in having a chair of anthropology created, and his course was cancelled in October 1892.[4] Indeed, his socialist militancy was a source of embarrassment: he had been a socialist candidate in municipal elections since 1888, he had founded the Montpellier section of Jules Guesde's French Workers' Party in 1890, and he contributed to the Messager du Midi and then to the République du Midi. Finally, on March 1, 1893, the anthropology laboratory in Montpellier was closed.

In the winter of 1890, he discovered the bones of the Giant of Castelnau in the Bronze Age cemetery of Castelnau-le-Lez in France. His results were published in the journal La Nature.[5]

He wrote L'Aryen: son Rôle Social (1899, "The Aryan: His Social Role"), in which he opposed the Aryan, dolichocephalic races to the brachycephalic races. Vacher de Lapouge thus classified human races: first the Homo europaeus, Nordic or fair-hair and Protestant, then the Homo alpinus, represented by the Auvergnat and the Turk, finally the Homo mediterraneus, figured by the Neapoletan or the Andaluz. Lapouge succeeded in being appointed head librarian at the University of Rennes, where he remained until 1900. He then became head of the library at the University of Poitiers until his retirement in 1922.

Defender of a selectionist and Aryanist socialism, implying a new morality and, inspired by the philosophies of nature derived from Darwinism, in particular that of Ernst Haeckel, he defended a civic and pantheistic religion of the vital and the solar, surpassing the ascetic and individualistic ideals of Christianity. Close to René Worms, the father of biological sociology, he published numerous articles in the Revue internationale de sociologie, which Worms had founded in 1893.

His ideas were well received by authors such as George Bernard Shaw, Édouard Drumont and Georges Sorel, but were also severely criticized in the scientific community, particularly among Durkheimian sociologists. Definitely disqualified from 1902 onwards in the French academic world by his criticism of the Durkheimians and the Dreyfusards, Lapouge lost all hope of obtaining a chair in anthropology in 1902. From 1902-1903, he could only publish his research in foreign, American or German journals. Nine articles thus appeared from 1904 to 1909 in the Woltmann review. Gathered in a volume, they were published by Rivière in 1909 under the title Race et milieu social. Essays in anthroposociology.

In March 1909, as a candidate for the chair of anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, France in Paris, he published a summary of his scientific work listing 87 publications from 1880 to 1909. But his application was rejected.

Making followers abroad, Lapouge was elected in December 1920 as a corresponding member if the Galton Society, founded in New York in March 1918. Also, during the second international eugenics congress, held in New York from September 22 to 28, 1921, he was invited to give a paper on "Race and Mixed Populations". Later, he was invited by the feminist leader Margaret Sanger to the sixth international congress of the Birth Control movement — a neo-Malthusian movement — which was held in New York in March 1925.

Committed to birth control, he prefaced and translated Passing of the Great Race (Le Déclin de la Grande Race, Payot, 1926), a work by his friend and correspondent Madison Grant, president since 1922 of the Immigration Restriction League, which considered immigration a threat to the survival of the white race. Finally, from 1927 to 1934, he published numerous articles in the Anglo-Saxon eugenics magazines, the Eugenics Review of London and the Eugenicals News of New York. He also translated one work of Ernst Haeckel into French.[6][7]

On the German side, in March 1927, he established relations with Hans F. K. Günther (1891–1968), a völkisch theorist of the European races, and wrote articles to die Sonne, a völkisch and eugenicist journal founded in 1924. Also, until 1934, he maintained a correspondence with Ludwig Schemann, whom he had met when he joined the Gobineau Society in 1898. Finally, he was in constant contact with the Nordic Ring, a mystic organization founded in 1926 by Paul Schultze-Naumburg, where he met Schemann again.

Ambivalent towards National Socialism, he felt flattered by the political application of his ideas,[8] but denounced the denaturation of his selectionist principles. On May 12, 1935, in a letter to the widow of his disciple Du Pont, he wondered about Hitler: "The future will tell whether the bogeyman policy of this great man can only lead to appalling exterminations and the end of the best."

He died a few months later in Poitiers.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Gloor, Pierre-André (1985). "Vacher de Lapouge et l'Anthroposociologie," Revue Européenne des Sciences Sociales, Vol. XXIII, No. 69, pp. 157–70.
  2. ↑ "Vacher de Lapouge advocated a socialist order because only such an order could assure that each individual’s racially based abilities could be determined independently of his class. When the 'non-doctrinaire socialist' declared in an article published in 1896 that 'socialism will be selectionist or it will not be at all,' he meant above all that the left should adopt the program of a radical eugenic: the breeding of the Aryan man of the future could only be achieved if, without regard to family background or social status, all 'racially inferior' were prevented from procreation, while all superior men, in addition to a service militaire, would be required to perform a service sexuelle without regard to all traditional norms of sexual behavior. Only if this political model of socialist eugenics were implemented, according to Vacher de Lapouge, would there be any chance that France would survive the impending great conflicts." — Weissmann, Karlheinz (1996). "The Epoch of National Socialism," The Journal of Libertarian Studies 12 (2), pp. 257-294.
  3. ↑ Matsuo Takeshi (University of Shimane, Japan). L'Anthropologie de Georges Vacher de Lapouge: Race, Classe et Eugénisme (Georges Vacher de Lapouge anthropology) in Etudes de Langue et littérature Françaises, 2001, No. 79, pp. 47–57. ISSN 0425-4929 ; INIST-CNRS, Cote INIST : 25320, 35400010021625.0050 (Abstract resume on the INIST-CNRS)
  4. ↑ Boissel, Jean (1982). “George Vacher de Lapouge: Un Socialiste Revolutionnaire Darwinien,” Nouvelle Ecole 13, pp. 59–83.
  5. ↑ Vol. 18, No. 8884 (1890).
  6. ↑ "G. Vacher de Lapouge was a man of wide interest in history, sociology and anthropology. Unlike many students of the ethnic problem, he possessed a good working knowledge of biology and human anatomy. He was a disciple of Haeckel. He translated the latter's booklet on the philosophy of monism into French, and provided an introduction to it." — Baker, John R. (1974). "The Historical Background," in Race. Oxford University Press, p. 46.
  7. ↑ Haeckel, Ernest (1897). Le Monisme, Lien Entre la Religion et la Science. Paris: Schleicher Frères.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Publications

Articles

  • (1886). "L'Hérédité," Revue d'Anthropologie 1, pp. 512–521.
  • (1887). "La Dépopulation de la France," Revue d'Anthropologie 2 (1), pp. 69–80.
  • (1887). "L'Anthropologie et la Science Politique," Revue d'Anthropologie 2 (2), pp. 136–157.
  • (1887). "Les Sélections Sociale," Revue d'Anthropologie 2 (5), pp. 519–550.
  • (1888). "De l'Inégalité Parmi les Hommes," Revue d'Anthropologie 3 (1), pp. 9–38.
  • (1888). "L´Hérédité dans la Science Politique," Revue d'Anthropologie 3 (2), pp. 169–181.
  • (1915). "Le Paradoxe Pangermaniste", Mercure de France, Tome 111, No. 416, pp. 640–654.
  • (1923). "Dies Irae: La Fin du Monde Civilise," Europe 9 (October 1): 59–61.

Works in English translation

  • (1905). "Natural Selection and Social Selection," in Sociology and Social Progress. Boston: Ginn & Company, pp. 647–653.
  • (1927). "Contribution to the Fundamentals of a Policy of Population," The Eugenics Review 19 (3), 192–7.
  • (1927). "The Numerous Families of Former Times," The Eugenics Review 19 (3), 198–202.
  • (1928). "Race Studies in Europe," Eugenical News 13 (6), 82–84.
  • (1928). "The Nordic Movement in Europe," Eugenical News 13 (10), 132–133.
  • (1929). "Thoughts of Count of Lapouge," Eugenical News 14 (6), 78–80.
  • (1930). "From Count de Lapouge," Eugenical News 15 (8), 116–117.
  • (1932). "Post-War Immigration into France," Eugenical News 17 (4), 94–95.
  • (1934). "A French View," Eugenical News 19 (2), 39–40.

Further reading

  • Augustin, Jean-Marie (2006). "Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936) aux Origines de l'Eugénisme", Revue Générale de Droit Médical, No. 21, p. 109–132.
  • Augustin, Jean-Marie (2011). Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936): Juriste, Raciologue et Eugéniste. Presses de l'Université de Toulouse I Capitole.
  • Béjin, André (1982). "Le sang, le sens et le travail : Georges Vacher de Lapouge darwinista social fondateur de l'anthroposociologie," Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, Vol. LXXIII, pp. 323–43.
  • Bernardini, Jean-Marc (1997). Le Darwinisme Sociale en France. Paris: CNRS Ed.
  • Clark, Linda L. (1984). Social Darwinism in France. The University of Alabama Press.
  • Colombat, Jean (1946). La Fin du Monde Civilisé: Les Prophéties de Vacher de Lapouge. Paris: Vrin.
  • Gasman, Daniel (1998). "The Monism of Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Gustave Le Bon," in Haeckel's Monism and the Birth of Fascist Ideology. New York: Peter Lang.
  • Guérard, A. L. (1917). "France and 'The Great Race'," The Unpopular Review 8 (16), pp. 248–261.
  • Hawkins, Mike (1997). Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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  • La Haye Jousselin, Henri de (1986). Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936): Essai de Bibliographie. Paris: Imprimerie A. Bontemps.
  • Nagel, Günter (1975). Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sozialdarwinismus in Frankreich. Freiburg: Hans Ferdinand Schulz.
  • Patte, Étienne (1937). "Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936)," Revue Générale de du Centre-Ouest de la France, 12e Année, pp. 769–789.
  • Quinlan, S. M. (1999). "The Racial Imagery of Degeneration and Depopulation: Georges Vacher de Lapouge and 'Anthroposociology' in Fin-de-Siècle France," History of European Ideas 24 (6), 393-413.
  • Seillière, Ernest (1914). "French Contributors to the Theory of Pan-Germanism," in The German Doctrine of Conquest. Dublin: Maunsel & Co.

External links

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