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The Mediterranean race was one of the three sub-categories into which the people of Europe were divided by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, following the publication of William Z. Ripley's book "The Races of Europe" (1899). The others were "Nordic" and "Alpine".
The Mediterranean race was thought to be prevalent in southern Europe and, sometimes, parts of North Africa, and was characterised by dark hair, dark eyes & complexion. According to some theorists of this period this was due to racial mixing with North African peoples, others argued that it had an independent history and identity.
Early debates
These differentiations occurred following long-standing claims about the alleged differences between the Nordic and the Mediterranean people. Such debates arose from responses to ancient writers who had commented on differences between northern and southern Europeans. For the Greeks and Romans, Germanic and Celtic peoples were often stereotyped as wild red haired barbarians. Aristotle argued that the Greeks were an ideal race because they possessed a medium skin-tone, in contrast to pale northerners and black Africans. However Tacitus argued that the Germans were an "unmixed" people, who had preserved their ancient language and race. By the nineteenth century German writers, such as Georg Hegel claimed that the Romans and Latin people maintained "the principle of disharmony" in contrast the Germans. Johann Fichte asserted that the Mediterraneans were deficient and de-Germanized through the loss of the original language. (Poliakov 1974). Martin Luther thought that the Germans, after having conquered the Romans, were fooled by the Romans who in turn enslaved the Germans through the Roman Catholic Church. (Poliakov 1974).
Racial theories
By the late nineteenth century, in Germany, Britain and the USA it was common for white supremacists to promote the merits of the blond, blue-eyed Nordic race as the most advanced of human population groups: the "master race". Southern Europeans were deemed to be inferior. However, in southern Europe itself alternative models were developed which stressed the merits of Mediterranean peoples. Some of these arguments were taken up by African-American writers to counter the arguments of Nordicists who considered any deviation from "pure" whiteness to be a taint.
The fact that Mediterranean peoples were responsible for the most important of ancient civilisations was a problem for the promoters of Nordic superiority. Giuseppe Sergi's much-debated book The Mediterranean Race (1901) argued that the Mediterranean race had in fact originated in Africa, and that it also included a number of dark-skinned African peoples, such as Ethiopians. Sergi's studies claimed that the Mediterraneans, the Africans and the Nordics all originated from an original Eurafrican Race. (Gilette 2002). According to Sergi the Mediterranean race, the "greatest race of the world", was responsible for the great civilisations of ancient times, including those of Egypt, Carthage, Greece and Rome. These Mediterranean peoples were quite distinct from the peoples of northern Europe. Sergi also argued that the Mediterranean race was closely related to a Hamitic African population, which included such groups as the Tutsi. To Sergi the Semites were a branch of the Eurafricans who were closely related to the Mediterraneans (Gilette 2002).
In the USA this idea was taken up in the early twentieth century by African-American writers such as W.E.B. Dubois, who used it to attack white supremacist ideas about racial "purity". Such publications as the Journal of Negro History stressed the cross-fertilisation of cultures between Africa and Europe, and adopted Sergi's view that the "civilising" race had originated in Africa itself. This fed into the development of Afrocentrism.
The fascist dictator Mussolini was critical of some aspects of Nordicism and of Nordic racism, which can be explained by his own experiences with Nordicist "racial science". Emil Ludwig recorded in his talks with Mussolini that Mussolini was arrested in 1903 in Zurich by the police and subjected to an anthropometrical examination (Gilette 2002).
20th century
Later in the 20th century the concept of a distinctive Mediterranean race was still considered useful by theorists such as Earnest Hooton in "Up From the Ape" (1931) and Carleton Coon in his revised edition of Ripley's "Races of Europe" (1939). The Nordic race was thought by these writers to be the northern variety of Mediterraneans that lost pigmentation through natural selection due to the environment.
Hooton argued that even a skilled anthropologist would have a difficult time separating a Nordic from Mediterranean skeleton. He thought an unstabilized blend of the two existed mostly in Britain that he labeled "Nordic-Mediterranean", with hazel eyes (rather than pure brown), dark hair color and dolichocephalic skull.
Coon argued that smaller Mediterraneans traveled by land from the Mediterranean basin north into Europe in the Mesolithic era. Taller Mediterraneans (Atlanto-Mediterraneans) were Neolithic seafarers who sailed in reed-type boats and colonized the Mediterranean basin from a Near Eastern origin. He argued that they also colonized Britain where their descendants may be seen today, characterized by brown hair and robust features.
After the 1960s the concept of a specific Mediterranean race fell out of favour, though the distinctive features of Mediterranean populations continued to be recognised.
References
- Racial Theories in Fascist Italy, by Aaron Gilette, 2002, Routledge, London.
- Talks with Mussolini, Emil Ludwig, Boston: Little, Brown. 1933, p.202.
- The Aryan Myth, Leon Poliakov, New York: Basic Books. 1974
External links
- Excerpt on the Mediterranean subrace from Earnest Hooton, 1946.
- Excerpt on the Mediterranean subrace from Carleton Coon, 1958.
"Mediterranean race"