The Glory of Ancient India Stems from her Aryan Blood: French anthropologists ‘construct’ the racial history of India for the world

In the last century the French presented their race-neutral policies as evidence of their colour blindness. Yet they were among the foremost proponents of race theory and racial hierarchy, which propelled the colonial machine of the nineteenth century. This article examines the role of French academics in creating a position for India in the racial imagination for the first time in history. It examines the motivations behind such a focus on India and the resulting response from Britain, the colonial ruler. The works of Paul Topinard, Louis Rousselet, Arthur Gobineau, and Gustave le Bon are situated in the colonial and political context of the mid-nineteenth century to demonstrate not only that it was the French, and not the Germans, who placed India on an Aryan pedestal, but that this move was propelled by the dream of an unfulfilled French empire in India.

La Préhistoire de L'Ouest Africain

Résumé de préhistoire africaine. ‘L'Afrique à elle senle nous donnerait peut-être la clef du problème de l'homme’ disait en 1877 le docteur Paul Topinard dans L'Anthropologie. Il faut bien convenir que si la prophétie de l'éminent anthropologue ne s'est pas encore réalisée, l'Afrique a livré des documents qui sont du plus haut intérêt pour l'étude du lointain passé des races humaines primitives.