John Pinkerton and his vision of ancient Scythians: "Si les Aryens n´existaient pas, il faudrait les inventer"

Abstract

The main purpose of the article is to describe the racial interpretation of European history proposed by an eminent British scholar John Pinkerton (1758–1826) in his book A Dissertation on the Origin and Progress of the Scythians or Goths (1787). The hypothesis suggested by John Pinkerton will be evaluated in a broader historical, intellectual and cultural context and its relationship to traditional Scytho-Celtic paradigm and indology of Royal Asiatic Society will be analyzed. Author argued that we could derive some fundamental similarities between Pinkerton's thesis and Aryan ideology penetrating Western political culture in the second half of nineteenth century. The fact could indicate that Western mentality used to be in a certain sense preadapted at the threshold of modernity for expansion of a new “myth of foundation” in the guise of racial aggressive narrative.