Editing Arthur de Gobineau (section)

==Early life and writings==
===Origins===
Gobineau came from an old well-established aristocratic family.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Arthur-comte-de-Gobineau|title=Arthur de Gobineau French Diplomat, Writer, and Ethnologist |access-date=2 September 2016|website=britannica.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160701230138/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Arthur-comte-de-Gobineau|archive-date=1 July 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> His father, Louis de Gobineau (1784–1858), was a military officer and staunch [[royalist]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/gobineau |title=Gobineau, Joseph Arthur de|year=2012|website=iranicaonline.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130517032222/http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/gobineau|archive-date=17 May 2013|url-status=live}}</ref> His mother, Anne-Louise Magdeleine de Gercy, was the daughter of a non-noble royal tax official. The de Gercy family lived in the French Crown colony of [[Saint-Domingue]] (modern [[Haiti]]) for a time in the 18th century.

Reflecting his hatred of the [[French Revolution]], Gobineau later wrote: "My birthday is [[Bastille Day|July 14th]], the date on which the Bastille was captured-which goes to prove how opposites may come together".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=19}} As a boy and young man, Gobineau loved the [[Middle Ages]], which he saw as a golden age of [[chivalry]] and [[knighthood]] much preferable to his own time.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=14}} Someone who knew Gobineau as a teenager described him as a romantic, "with chivalrous ideas and a heroic spirit, dreaming of what was most noble and most grand".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=14}}

Gobineau's father was committed to restoring the [[House of Bourbon]] and helped the [[royalist]] [[Jules de Polignac|Polignac brothers]] to escape from France.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=133}} As punishment he was imprisoned by [[Napoleon]]'s secret police but was freed when the Allies took Paris in 1814.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=133}} During the [[Hundred Days]] the de Gobineau family fled [[France]]. After Napoleon's final overthrow following the [[Battle of Waterloo]], Louis de Gobineau was rewarded for his loyalty to the House of Bourbon by being made a captain in the [[:fr:Garde royale (France)|Royal Guard]] of King [[Louis XVIII]].{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=133}} The pay for a Royal Guardsman was very low, and the de Gobineau family struggled on his salary.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=133}}

Magdeleine de Gobineau abandoned her husband for her children's tutor Charles de La Coindière. Together with her lover she took her son and two daughters on extended wanderings across eastern France, Switzerland and the [[Grand Duchy of Baden]].{{sfn|Budil|2008|pp=133–4}} To support herself, she turned to fraud (for which she was imprisoned). His mother became a severe embarrassment to Gobineau, who never spoke to her after he turned twenty.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=12}}

For the young de Gobineau, committed to upholding traditional aristocratic and [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] values, the disintegration of his parents' marriage, his mother's open relationship with her lover, her fraudulent acts, and the turmoil imposed by being constantly on the run and living in poverty were all very traumatic.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=12}}

===Adolescence===
Gobineau spent the early part of his teenage years in the town of [[Inzlingen|Inzligen]] where his mother and her lover were staying. He became fluent in German.{{sfn|Budil|2008|pp=133–134}} As a staunch supporter of the House of Bourbon, his father was forced to retire from the Royal Guard after the [[July Revolution]] of 1830 brought [[House of Orléans]] King [[Louis Philippe I|Louis-Philippe]], ''Le roi citoyen'', ("the Citizen King") to power. He promised to reconcile the heritage of the French Revolution with the monarchy.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=11}} Given his family's history of supporting the Bourbons, the young Gobineau regarded the July Revolution as a disaster for France.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=20}} His views were those of a [[Legitimist]] committed to a Catholic France ruled over by the House of Bourbon.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=13}} In 1831, de Gobineau's father took custody of his three children, and his son spent the rest of his adolescence in [[Lorient]], in [[Brittany]].{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=134}}
[[File:QT - Antoine Galland.PNG|thumb|235x235px|alt=Black and white sketch of Antoine Galland | The [[Orientalism|Orientalist]] tales of [[Antoine Galland]] (pictured) had a strong influence on Gobineau in his youth.]]
Gobineau disliked his father, whom he dismissed as a boring and pedantic army officer incapable of stimulating thought.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=12}} Lorient had been founded in 1675 as a base for the [[Louis XIV's East India Company|French East India Company]] as King [[Louis XIV]] had grand ambitions for making France the dominant political and economic power in [[Asia]].{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=134}} As those ambitions were unrealized, Gobineau developed a sense of faded glory as he grew up in a city that had been built to be the dominant hub for Europe's trade with Asia. This dream went unrealized, as [[India]] became part of the [[British Empire|British]] and not the French empire.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=134}}

As a young man, Gobineau was fascinated with the Orient, as the [[Middle East]] was known in Europe in the 19th century.{{sfn|Irwin|2016|pp=321–322}} While studying at the Collège de Bironne in [[Switzerland]], a fellow student recalled: "All of his aspirations were towards the East. He dreamt only of [[mosque]]s and [[minaret]]s; he called himself a [[Muslim]], ready to make the pilgrimage to [[Mecca]]".{{sfn|Irwin|2016|pp=321–322}} Gobineau loved Oriental tales by the French translator [[Antoine Galland]], often saying he wanted to become an [[Orientalism|Orientalist]]. He read Arab, Turkish and Persian tales in translation, becoming what the French call a "''un orientaliste de pacotille''" ("rubbish orientalist").{{sfn|Irwin|2016|p=322}} In 1835, Gobineau failed the entrance exams to the [[École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr|St. Cyr military school]].{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=134}}

In September 1835, Gobineau left for Paris with fifty francs in his pocket aiming to become a writer.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=134}} He moved in with an uncle, Thibaut-Joseph de Gobineau, a [[Legitimists|Legitimist]] with an "unlimited" hatred of Louis-Philippe.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=15}} Reflecting his tendency towards elitism, Gobineau founded a society of Legitimist intellectuals called ''Les Scelti'' ("the elect"), which included himself, the painter Guermann John (German von Bohn) and the writer [[Maxime du Camp]].{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=16}}

===Early writings===
In the later years of the [[July Monarchy]], Gobineau made his living writing serialized fiction ([[Feuilleton|''romans-feuilletons'']]) and contributing to [[reactionary]] periodicals.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=135}} He wrote for the ''Union Catholique'', ''[[La Quotidienne]]'', ''L'Unité'', and ''[[Revue de Paris]]''.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=19}} At one point in the early 1840s, Gobineau was writing an article every day for ''La Quotidienne'' to support himself.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=19}}  As a writer and journalist, he struggled financially and was forever looking for a wealthy patron willing to support him.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=135}} As a part-time employee of the Post Office and a full-time writer, Gobineau was desperately poor.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=16}}

His family background made him a supporter of the House of Bourbon, but the nature of the Legitimist movement dominated by factious and inept leaders drove Gobineau to despair, leading him to write: "We are lost and had better resign ourselves to the fact".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=17}} In a letter to his father, Gobineau complained of "the laxity, the weakness, the foolishness and—in a word—the pure folly of my cherished party".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=19}}

At the same time, he regarded French society under the House of Orléans as corrupt and self-serving, dominated by the "oppressive feudalism of money" as opposed to the feudalism of "charity, courage, virtue and intelligence" held by the ''ancien-régime'' nobility.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=20}} Gobineau wrote about July Monarchy France: "Money has become the principle of power and honour. Money dominates business; money regulates the population; money governs; money salves consciences; money is the criterion for judging the esteem due to men".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=21}}

In this "age of national mediocrity" as Gobineau described it, with society going in a direction he disapproved of, the leaders of the cause to which he was committed being by his own admission foolish and incompetent, and the would-be aristocrat struggling to make ends meet by writing hack journalism and novels, he became more and more pessimistic about the future.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=21}} Gobineau wrote in a letter to his father: "How I despair of a society which is no longer anything, except in spirit, and which has no heart left".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=16}} He complained the Legitimists spent their time feuding with one another while the Catholic Church "is going over to the side of the revolution".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=16}} Gobineau wrote: {{blockquote|Our poor country lies in Roman decadence. Where there is no longer an aristocracy worthy of itself, a nation dies. Our Nobles are conceited fools and cowards. I no longer believe in anything nor have any views. From Louis-Philippe we shall proceed to the first trimmer who will take us up, but only in order to pass us on to another. For we are without fibre and moral energy. ''Money has killed everything''.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=16}}}}Gobineau struck up a friendship and had voluminous correspondence with [[Alexis de Tocqueville]].<ref>Richter, Melvin (1958). "The Study of Man. A Debate on Race: The Tocqueville-Gobineau Correspondence," ''Commentary'' '''25''' (2), pp. 151–160.</ref><ref>Alexis de Tocqueville, ''The European Revolution and Correspondence with Gobineau,'' John Lukacz (ed.), [[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday Anchor Books]], 1959.</ref><ref>Beloff, Max (1986). "Tocqueville & Gobineau," ''Encounter'', Vol. LXVII, No. 1, pp. 29–31.</ref><ref>Tessitore, Aristide (2005). "Tocqueville and Gobineau on the Nature of Modern Politics," ''The Review of Politics,'' Vol. 67, No. 4, pp. 631–657.</ref> Tocqueville praised Gobineau in a letter: "You have wide knowledge, much intelligence, and the best of manners".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=47}} He later gave Gobineau an appointment in the [[Quai d'Orsay]] (the French foreign ministry) while serving as foreign minister during the [[Second Republic (France)|Second Republic of France]].<ref name="DJ. Richards 1900. pp. 101–117">{{Citation|last=Richards|first=E. J.|title=Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau (14 July 1816–13 October 1882)|url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sort=RELEVANCE&docType=Biography%2C+Biography&tabID=T002&prodId=DLBC&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchType=BasicSearchForm&contentSegment=&currentPosition=1&searchResultsType=MultiTab&inPS=true&userGroupName=san17777&docId=GALE%7CLQOXCP894110461&contentSet=GALE%7CLQOXCP894110461|work=[[Dictionary of Literary Biography]]|volume=123: Nineteenth-Century French Fiction Writers: Naturalism and Beyond, 1860–1900|pages=101–117|year=1992|editor1-last=Brosman |editor1-first=Catharine Savage |editor1-link=Catharine Savage Brosman |series=A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book|place=Tulane University|publisher=[[The Gale Group]]}}</ref>

====Breakthrough with Kapodistrias article====
In 1841, Gobineau scored his first major success when an article he submitted to ''[[Revue des deux Mondes]]'' was published on 15 April 1841.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=135}} Gobineau's article was about the Greek statesman Count [[Ioannis Kapodistrias]]. At the time, ''La Revue des Deux Mondes'' was one of the most prestigious journals in Paris, and being published in it put Gobineau in the same company as [[George Sand]], [[Théophile Gautier]], [[Philarète Chasles]], [[Alphonse de Lamartine]], [[Edgar Quinet]] and [[Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve]] who were all published regularly in that journal.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=135}}

===On international politics===
Gobineau's writings on international politics were generally as negative as his writings on France. He depicted [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|Britain]] as a nation motivated entirely by hatred and greed and the extent of the [[British Empire]] around the globe as a source of regret.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=33}} Gobineau often attacked King Louis-Phillipe for his pro-British foreign policy, writing that he had "humiliated" France by allowing the British Empire to become the world's dominant power.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|pp=20–21}} However, reports on the poor economic state of [[History of Ireland (1801–1923)|Ireland]] were a source of satisfaction for Gobineau as he asserted: "It is Ireland which is pushing England into the abyss of revolution".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=33}}

According to Gobineau, the growing power and aggressiveness of [[Russian Empire|Imperial Russia]] were a cause for concern. He regarded the disastrous [[1842 retreat from Kabul|retreat from Kabul]] by the British during the [[First Anglo-Afghan War]] with [[Emirate of Afghanistan|Afghanistan]] as a sign Russia would be the dominant power in Asia, writing: "England, an aging nation, is defending its livelihood and its existence. Russia, a youthful nation, is following its path towards the power that it must surely gain ... The empire of the Tsars is today the power which seems to have the greatest future ... The Russian people are marching steadfastly towards a goal that is indeed known but still not completely defined".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=34}} Gobineau regarded Russia as an Asian power and felt the inevitable triumph of Russia was a triumph of Asia over Europe.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=34}}

He had mixed feelings about the German states, praising [[Kingdom of Prussia|Prussia]] as a conservative society dominated by the ''[[Junker (Prussia)|Junkers]]''. But he worried increasing economic growth promoted by the ''[[Zollverein]]'' (the German Customs Union) was making the Prussian middle-class more powerful.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|pp=24–26}} Gobineau was critical of the [[Austrian Empire]], writing that the [[House of Habsburg]] ruled over a mixed population of ethnic Germans, Magyars, Italians, Slavic peoples, etc., and it was inevitable such a multi-ethnic society would go into decline, while the "purely German" Prussia was destined to unify [[Germany]].{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=24}}

Gobineau was also pessimistic about [[Italy]], writing: "Shortly after the ''[[condottieri]]'' disappeared everything that had lived and flourished with them went too; wealth, gallantry, art and liberty, there remained nothing but a fertile land and an incomparable sky".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=42}} Gobineau denounced [[Spain]] for rejecting "a firm and natural authority, a power rooted in national liberty", predicting that without order imposed by an absolute monarchy, she was destined to sink into a state of perpetual revolution.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=37}} He was dismissive of [[Latin America]], writing with references to the [[Spanish American wars of independence|wars of independence]]: "The destruction of their agriculture, trade and finances, the inevitable consequence of long civil disorder, did not at all seem to them a price too high to pay for what they had in view. And yet who would want to claim that the half-barbarous inhabitants of [[Castile (historical region)|Castile]] or the [[Algarve]] or the ''[[gaucho]]s'' on the [[Río de la Plata|River Plate]] really deserve to sit as supreme legislators, in the places which they have contested against their masters with such pleasure and energy".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|pp=37–38}}

About the United States, Gobineau wrote: "The only greatness is that of wealth, and as everyone can acquire this, its ownership is independent of any of the qualities reserved to superior natures".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=38}} Gobineau wrote the United States lacked an aristocracy, with no sense of ''noblesse oblige'' ("nobility obligates") as existed in Europe. The American poor suffered worse than the European poor, causing the United States to be a violent society, where greed and materialism were the only values that counted.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=39}} In general Gobineau was hostile towards people in the Americas, writing that who in the [[Old World]] does not know "that the [[New World]] knows nothing of kings, princes and nobles?-that on those semi-virgin lands, in human societies born yesterday and scarcely yet consolidated, no one has the right or the power to call himself any greater than the very least of its citizens?"{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=38}}

===Marriage===
[[File:Beauvais (60), MUDO, Ary Scheffer - portrait de la comtesse de Gobineau, 1850.JPG|alt=Departmental Museum of the Oise|thumb| Portrait of Gobineau's wife, Clémence, by [[Ary Scheffer]] (1850)]]
In 1846, Gobineau married [[Clémence Gabrielle Monnerot]]. She had pressed for a hasty marriage as she was pregnant by their mutual friend Pierre de Serre who had abandoned her. As a practicing Catholic, she did not wish to give birth to an illegitimate child.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=45}} Monnerot had been born in [[Martinique]]. As with his mother, Gobineau was never entirely certain if his wife, and hence his two daughters had black ancestors or not, as it was a common practice for French slave masters in the Caribbean to take a slave mistress.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=45}} Gobineau's opposition to [[slavery]], which he held always resulted in harmful [[miscegenation]] to whites, may have stemmed from his own personal anxieties that his mother or his wife might have African ancestry.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=45}}