Are there powerboat races around the world?

What are the real world equivalents of races described by Tolkien?

• Is it possible to map the kingdoms and races described by Tolkien (The Hobbit, LotR) to real world empires and races? Somehow I have the feeling that each fictional race represents something deeper, some quintessential characteristics as expected from a historical race, but cannot say why.

• Answer:

  The short answer is "not really". Anything that I say after that will be overstating the case. Tolkien hated allegory, and any statement of the form "The Xs are really Ys" would make him really, really cranky. So you really need to read the rest of this with the realization that "no" is the correct answer. Most notably, the Elves aren't anybody but Elves. The whole conceit of Tolkien's universe is that Elves were a real species who have diminished and disappeared. They're not inspired by any real-world people, but by myths which he made is own. The Orcs and Ents are similarly inspired by myths, not by any humans. In creating his other peoples, he might begin with a notion from the real world. The Rohirrim are definitely inspired by the Germanic peoples; they use Anglo-Saxon names and imagery. Rohirric poetry is alliterative verse, in the same style as Beowulf. They are a client kingdom of Gondor, which can be compared roughly to Rome. He once described Minias Tirith as "Byzantine"; that is, Constantinople, the eastern surviving part of the fallen Roman empire. Their enemies allude faintly to the enemies of Rome: from the East, people slightly like the Mongols and Huns. From the South, people a bit like Africans. But as I stressed earlier, it would be a serious error to equate the two. The Hobbits harken to a romanticized Victorian English countryside folk. And Tolkien admitted that he thought of the Dwarves as Jews: a displaced people living in other lands, speaking their own language to each other. Given the stereotype of greedy Jews and the Dwarves, a Nazi sympathizer tried to sound Tolkien out on anti-semitism, which he explicitly rejected: he said is name "is not Jewish in origin, though I should consider it an honour if it were." So, I really don't think it's fair to say that there are "deeper, quintessential characteristics as expected from a historical race". That's not how he worked. He sometimes drew ideas from the real world in places, but they were a starting point for his imagination, not a reality he was trying to shadow with allegory. This is important, because it would be very easy to try to extend the allegory, and stated that he would "regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine".