During the
Reformation, some parts of Northwestern Europe converted to
Protestantism, in a manner which differentiated the region from its
Roman Catholic neighbours elsewhere in Europe. A definition of Northwestern Europe was used by some late 19th to mid-20th century
anthropologists,
eugenicists, and
Nordicists, who used the term as a shorthand term for the part of Europe with a predominantly
Nordic population. For example,
Arthur de Gobineau, the 19th-century aristocrat who published works on the
pseudoscience of
scientific racism, included parts of Northwestern Europe in what Leon Baradat described as his "Aryan heaven". ==Genetics==