Alien Warrior Races Are Dumb

It seems you have to go quite far forward in time before the concept of the Mongols as a “warrior race” really appears. For hundreds of years, biology and culture were treated as clearly separate, even in relatively unenlightened eras. There are some general references in popular works, but in most cases “race” referred to cultural traits, since “race” and ethnic heritage were once synonymous.

For example, The Queenslander (Brisbane), 19 June 1897, described:

“Casan was a born soldier, … and, like all his race, could endure hunger, thirst, fatigue, and cold.”

Here we see a Victorian/colonial newspaper retelling a Mongol/Tartar biography in explicitly racialized terms — “like all his race” — a clear shift toward the modern biological sense of race.

It’s only by the late 19th century, in the era of racial science and Social Darwinism, that “race” is reframed as biological destiny. That is the world of the Queenslander line above: still leaning on cultural stereotypes of steppe endurance, but now filtered through a racialist lens that treats them as innate, hereditary, almost physiological.

To summarize the trajectory:

• For hundreds of years → biology and culture were treated as distinct, even in “unenlightened” times.

• Victorian/colonial moment → older cultural stereotypes of the Mongols were biologized and cast as racial destiny.

• Modern scholarship → separates biology and culture again, rejecting “warrior race” language in favor of explanations rooted in ecology, institutions, and politics.