Gobineau publishes racial inequality essay

Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (7 14 1816 – 10 13 1882), a French diplomat and writer, published his four-volume work Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines between 1853 and 1855. The essay systematized ideas of racial hierarchy and influenced later nationalist and racialist thought in Europe. Gobineau did not use the term “racisme,” but his work laid the conceptual foundation that would later lead to the word’s emergence in French political discourse.