Original scientific paper
Racial Doctrine and Eugenics in Croatian Lands up to the mid-1930s
Tomislav Jonjić
orcid.org/0000-0001-8680-9801
; Zagreb
Abstract
Despite abundant literature on the emergence, development and aberrations of racial doctrine, according to which the racial factor is an unavoidable and even key factor in the life of an individual, nation or state, in the Croatian intellectual milieu the erroneous belief prevailed that these theories dated to the second half of the nineteenth century. The task of this text is to show how these teachings began to develop during the first half of the seventeenth century, so that by the first half of the nineteenth century they already had a significant impact on the political and public life of the western world. All the while there were racist theories, i.e., theories according to which there are superior races who are entitled to dominate, even at the cost of the elimination of inferior individuals, groups and races. The evolutionary theories that marked the nineteenth century contributed to the development of philosophical, sociological and political beliefs that it was possible to “improve the race” through systematic eugenic programs. This doctrine underwent dramatic development during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All these theories had delayed and diminished repercussions in the Croatian lands but Croatian historiography has generally failed to notice the ample evidence that “Serbo-Croatianism” and Yugoslavism were the only racist theories in the southern Slavic region that had been consistently conceived and seriously enforced prior to the eve of the Second World War.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
178174
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2016.
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