The Turanid race was a supposed sub-race of the Caucasian race in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of

colonialism Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colony, colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose the ...

. The Turanid type was traditionally held to be most common among the populations native to

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

. The name is taken from the phylum of

Turanian languages Turanian is an obsolete language-family proposal subsuming most of the languages of Eurasia not included in Indo-European, Semitic and Chinese. During the 19th century, inspired by the establishment of the Indo-European family, scholars looked ...

, which are the combination of the Uralic and

Altaic Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are ...

families, hence also referred to as the term Ural–Altaic race.

History

Anthropologists An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

of the 19th and early 20th century posited the existence of a Turanid racial type or "minor race" as a subtype of the Caucasoid race with some

Mongoloid Mongoloid () is an obsolete racial grouping of various peoples indigenous to large parts of Asia, the Americas, and some regions in Europe and Oceania. The term is derived from a now-disproven theory of biological race. In the past, other terms ...

admixture, situated at the boundary of the distribution of the Mongoloid and Caucasoid races. The idea of a Turanid race came to play a role of some significance in

Pan-Turkism Pan-Turkism is a political movement that emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals who lived in the Russian region of Kazan (Tatarstan), Caucasus (modern-day Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern-day Turkey), with its aim bei ...

Turanism Turanism, also known as pan-Turanianism, pan-Turanism, or simply Turan, is a pseudoscientific pan-nationalist cultural and political movement proclaiming the need for close cooperation or political unification between people who are claimed by ...

in the late 19th to 20th century. A "Turkish race" was proposed as a Caucasoid subtype in European literature of the period. The most influential of these sources were (1756–1758) by

Joseph de Guignes __NOTOC__ Joseph de Guignes (19 October 1721 – 19 March 1800) was a French orientalist, sinologist and Turkologist born at Pontoise, the son of Jean Louis de Guignes and Françoise Vaillant. He died at Paris. He succeeded Étienne Fourmont at ...

(1721–1800), and ''Sketches of Central Asia'' (1867) by

Ármin Vámbéry Ármin Vámbéry (born Hermann Wamberger; 19 March 183215 September 1913), also known as Arminius Vámbéry, was a Hungarian Turkology, Turkologist and traveller. Early life Vámbéry was born in Szent-György, Kingdom of Hungary (now Svät� ...

, which was on the common origins of Turkic groups as belonging to one race, but subdivided according to physical traits and customs, and (1896) by Leon Cahun, which stressed the role of Turks in "carrying civilization to Europe", as a part of the greater "Turanid race" that included the Uralic and Altaic speaking peoples more generally. There was also an ideology of

Hungarian Turanism Hungarian Turanism ( hu, Turánizmus / Turanizmus) is a diverse Turanist / Pan-Turkic phenomenon that revolves around an identification or association of Hungarian history and people with the histories and peoples of Central Asia, Inner Asia or ...

most lively in the second half of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century.

History

See also

References

Further reading