Joseph Deniker - Deniker's Classification System

Deniker's Classification System

Deniker's complicated maps of European races, of which he sometimes counted upwards of twenty, were widely referenced in his day, if only to illustrate the extremes of arbitrary racial classification. In the late 19th century and early 20th century he had an extensive debate with another racial cartographer, William Z. Ripley, over the nature of race and the number of races. At the time, Ripley maintained that Europe was composed of three racial stocks, while Deniker held there were ten European races (six primary races with four subsidiary or sub-races). The 6 primary races are Nordic, Littoral (also called Atlanto-Mediterranean), Oriental, Adriatic (also called Dinaric), Ibero-Insular, and Occidental (also called Cevenole). The four subtypes are Sub-Nordic, North-Occidental, Vistula, and Sub-Adriatic.

Deniker's most lasting contribution to the field of racial theory was the designation of one of his races as la race nordique (the Northern race). While this group had no special place in Deniker's racial model, this "Nordic race" would be elevated by the famous eugenicist and scientific racist Madison Grant in his Nordic theory to the engine of civilization. Grant adopted Ripley's three-race model for Europeans, but disliked Ripley's use of the "Teuton" for one of the races. Grant transliterated la race nordique into "Nordic", and promoted it to the top of his racial hierarchy in his own popular racial theory of the 1910s and 1920s.

Deniker proposed that the concept of race was too confusing, and instead proposed the use of the word "ethnic group" instead, which was later adopted prominently in the work of Julian Huxley and Alfred C. Haddon. Ripley argued that Deniker's idea of a race should be rather called a "type", since it was far less biologically rigid that most approaches to the question of race.