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What happens when fear of a changing world becomes an argument for racial supremacy?
In The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, Lothrop Stoddard presents global politics through racial alarm. Writing in 1920, he sees the First World War as a blow to European power. He casts the growing populations and political awakening of Asians, Africans and others as threats to white dominance.
Stoddard sorts humanity into fixed racial groups and treats empire as a white achievement. His survey turns to Japan, Islam, Asia, population and migration to build his case. Historians regard the book as a leading example of scientific racism, not science. Reading it critically helps reveal what this racist worldview claims and how it builds its arguments.
What you’ll discover
- A worldview built on fear Examine how Stoddard turns a changing balance of power into a story of racial danger.
- Race treated as destiny See how his fixed categories assign an inborn character to whole groups of people.
- Empire through a racial lens Trace an account of European expansion that presents control of the world as white achievement.
- Japan challenges his assumptions Explore why Japan's victory over Russia matters so much to Stoddard's picture of global power.
- Population becomes political alarm Follow the way his arguments about numbers and migration feed his fears for white supremacy.
Who will love it
Readers of intellectual history, students of empire and the First World War, and anyone curious how racial theory shaped politics in 1920 will find the fears of that age laid bare.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Race becomes an explanation for history
- Population becomes a story of danger
- Japan and China become one threat
- Empire depends on more than force
- Racial assumptions defend colonial rule
- Growing power becomes imagined decline
- War losses serve the racial theory
- Exclusion becomes his proposed defense
- Fear is presented as racial fact
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The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
by Lothrop Stoddard · 1920
An American author in 1920 maps the world by race and predicts a clash, a view historians reject.
Challenging5–10 hours to read20 languages
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In short
What happens when a writer decides that race, not politics, is the master force in history? In 1920 the American author Lothrop Stoddard did exactly that, and his book sold widely and shaped arguments about immigration and empire.
The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy at a glance
- Reading time
- About 5 h 35 min4 h 25 min fast, 6 h 40 min slow
- Length
- 79,600 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1920by Lothrop Stoddard
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Race is treated as the force behind history
Stoddard published this book in 1920, soon after the Great War ended. He was an American writer trained as a historian, and Madison Grant supplies an introduction on the biological side.
His central claim is that politics is only a surface. Race, he says, is the basic force in human affairs. The political map of 1914 shows white flags almost everywhere, while his racial map shows a white world small beside the lands of color.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 12 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1920
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 6 h 10 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Stoddard, Lothrop. The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-rising-tide-of-color-against-white-world-supremacy.
Stoddard, L. (2026). The rising tide of color against white world-supremacy. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-rising-tide-of-color-against-white-world-supremacy (Original work published 1920)
Stoddard, Lothrop. The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-rising-tide-of-color-against-white-world-supremacy.
@book{stoddard2026rising,
author = {Stoddard, Lothrop},
title = {The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-rising-tide-of-color-against-white-world-supremacy},
note = {First published 1920}
}
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What is The Rising Tide of Color about?
It argues that world politics is driven by race. Stoddard surveys the yellow, brown, black and red peoples, the weakening of Europe in the Great War, and what he calls defenses for the white world. Modern scholars treat it as racial propaganda.
Who was Madison Grant and why is he in the book?
Madison Grant was an American writer on conservation and race who wrote the introduction. He supplied the biological and historical background for Stoddard's claims, using a scheme of Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean types that scholars later discarded.
What does the dikes metaphor mean in the book?
Stoddard pictures the colored peoples as a rising tide. Outer dikes are political dependencies; he places the true ones in Africa and Latin America. Inner dikes are lands settled by whites, which he says must be guarded by strict immigration bars.
The author
Lothrop Stoddard
1883–1950 · American white-supremacist historian
Lothrop Stoddard (1883–1950) was an American historian, political scientist, and journalist who promoted white supremacy. He was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, and died in Washington, D.C. He wrote The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, published in 1920, and The Revolt Against Civilization, published in 1922.
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