Joseph Arthur de Gobineau

Arthur de Gobineau
Portrait of Gobineau, by the Comtesse de la Tour, 1876
Born	(1816-07-14)14 July 1816 Ville-d'Avray, Hauts-de-Seine
Died	13 October 1882(1882-10-13) (aged 66) Turin
Nationality	French
Occupation	Novelist, diplomat, travel writer

Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French who is best known today for helping to legitimise racism by use of scientific racist theory and "racial demography" and for his developing the theory of the Aryan master race. Known to his contemporaries as a novelist, diplomat and travel writer, Gobineau was an elitist who, in the immediate aftermath of the Revolutions of 1848, wrote a 1400-page book, An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, in which he claimed that were superior to commoners and that they possessed more Aryan genetic traits because of less interbreeding with inferior races (Alpines and Mediterraneans).

Gobineau's writings were quickly praised by white supremacist, pro-slavery Americans like Josiah C. Nott and Henry Hotze, who translated his book into English but omitted around 1000 pages of the original book, including those parts that negatively described Americans as a racially mixed population. Gobineau's writings were also influential on prominent anti-Semites such as Richard Wagner, Wagner's son-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Romanian politician professor A. C. Cuza, and leaders of the Nazi Party, who later edited and re-published his work.