Lothrop Stoddard

Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1883, Theodore Lothrop Stoddard studied at Harvard, where he earned a PhD in history. He went on to write a series of books and articles on international affairs, immigration, and global political change, reaching a large audience in the United States during the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s.

He is best known for works including The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy and The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man. He also wrote on the Haitian Revolution and on the political upheavals of his era, presenting himself as an interpreter of large historical forces.

Today, Stoddard is remembered less as a mainstream historian than as a prominent advocate of white supremacist and eugenic ideas. That legacy has made him an important, and deeply troubling, figure in the history of race theory and American intellectual life.