Conquest of a Continent

Madison Grant (1865-1937) was one of America’s most influential racial thinkers. In Conquest of a Continent, Grant tells us of the European antecedents of the original settlers who tamed America. Grant was an unapologetic Nordicist and, by using documented historical fact, proves that the colonists who opened up America for settlement were primarily of northwestern European stock. Grant provides an overview of the historical racial composition of Europe, and goes on to show how America reached its greatest degree of racial homogeneity in 1860. He tells us how later immigration steadily undermined this founding stock. Written at a time when the U.S. Congress had just halted all further non-northwestern European immigration, Grant’s book predicted what would happen if unlimited immigration were allowed once again. Grant also envisioned what America might look like if the inevitable racial problems created by freeing the slaves and allowing waves of illegal Mexican immigrants into America were not dealt with effectively. This edition of Conquest of a Continent includes all the original maps from the 1993 edition and contains two brand new appendices. The first details how the Anti-Defamation League sought to suppress this book upon its first publication, and the second is of a 2006 study which showed that the number of Americans born with blue eyes had dropped from 1 in 2 in 1900 to less than 1 in 6 in 2000—proof of the accuracy of Grant’s predictions that unlimited immigration would lead to the de-Nordicization of America. Conquest of a Continent is sobering reading for the 21st century.