Stoddard claims that there is a perceived threat of non-white "races" to the global dominance of the white race, "typified by the
Russo-Japanese War," which he represents as a struggle of color against white. In addition to
Japan he describes a "brown reaction", which he calls "the
Mohammedan Revival", taking as exemplary Yahya Siddyk's work "The Awakening of the Islamic Peoples in the Fourteenth Century of the Hegira". He also describes in Africa a movement he calls the "
Ethiopian Church", spread by "Afro-American
Methodist preachers", and "having had a hand in the
Zulu rising which broke out in
Natal in 1907". The book also warns of the dangers of race mixing and the need for white countries to maintain their racial "purity". The thesis is that due to
immigration, white people produce fewer children so as to give them the capital to live in white communities: "As long as the people of any community are relatively homogeneous, what differences of wealth and social position there may be do not affect the birth-rate, or do so only after a considerable time. But put into that community a number of immigrants, inferior mentally, socially, and economically, and the natives are unwilling to have their children associate with them in work or social life. They then limit the number of their children in order to give them the capital or education to enter occupations in which they will not be brought into contact with the new arrivals." Stoddard argues that the increasing population and economic power of non-white races, particularly in Asia, will lead to a "collapse of civilization", typified by the situation in
Latin America, which he describes as "the
mongrel's political ascendancy", saying further that "[t]hese unhappy beings, every cell of whose bodies is a battle-ground of jarring heredities, express their souls in acts of hectic violence and aimless instability. The normal state of tropical America is anarchy, restrained only by domestic tyrants or foreign masters". Stoddard's thesis is that the white race has dominated world affairs for centuries and has created a civilization that is superior to all others. ==Publication and reception==