Lothrop Stoddard

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Lothrop Stoddard.

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

[edit] Biography

Stoddard was born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1883 to a prominent New England family. Stoddard's anti-immigration stance was influenced by his upbringing seeing typical all-American unrestricted immigration as threatning to the world in which he was raised. 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 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 broke world politics and situations down to the "white", "yellow", "black", and "brown" people and their interactions with each other.

In his book, Stoddard detailed how the "yellow" nations of Asia presented a very dangerous threat to White Supremacy, as the Chinese and Japanese were the only colored races not ruled by whites at the time. He documented the imperialist ambitions of Japan, the alarming population growth of China, and how the yellows represented the only race that could challenge whites in terms of technological advancement. Stoddard also warned that Muslims, most of whom belonged to the "brown" races, may also be a threat to white dominance because of their religious fanaticism.

The book was notable enough to receive a veiled mention in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, where the character Tom Buchanan was reading a book called The Rise of the Colored Empires by "this man Goddard", a combination of both Grant and Stoddard's name. "Everybody ought to read it", the character explained, "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

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 lifelong Unitarian and Republican, having sided with the party's isolationist and anti-war stance during the 1930's and early 1940's, as well as its support for immigration restriction in the 1920's. He had also been opposed to World War I, seeing that conflict as the "modern Peloponnesian War" and accounting for the weakening of the white world.

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 eugenics and birth control legislation in order to reduce the numbers of the underclass while promoting the growth of the middle and upper classes.

Stoddard authored over two dozen works, most related to race and civilization, echoing the themes of his previous works about the dangers posed to American culture and way of life by immigration and the threat posed to all of white civilization by the worldwide rebellion of colored peoples, fueled by whites' own misguided sentimentalism and support for colored independence.

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 had blasted the ethnic supremacism showed by 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.
• 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

• Eugenics
• Ethnocenrism

[edit] Works online

• The French Revolution in San Domingo (1914) via Google Books
• The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1922 edn.) via Google Books
• The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man (1922) via Google Books; also available at: http://users.mo-net.com/mlindste/revltciv.html
• Into the Darkness (1940)

[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

• "Stoddard Rediscovered" from the anti-immigration website VDARE.
• "A Warning from the Past" from the controversial magazine American Renaissance.
• Review of Into the Darkness by the Institute for Historical Review, an organization best known for their advocacy of Holocaust denial.