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The Origins of Racism in the West
Is it possible to speak of western racism before the eighteenth century? The term 'racism' is normally only associated with theories, which first appeared in the eighteenth century, about inherent biological differences that made one group superior to another. Here, however, leading historians argue that racism can be traced back to the attitudes of the ancient Greeks to their Persian enemies and that it was adopted, adjusted and re-formulated by Europeans right through until the dawn of the Enlightenment. From Greek teachings on environmental determinism and heredity, through medieval concepts of physiognomy, down to the crystallization of attitudes to Indians, Blacks, Jews and Gypsies in the early modern era, they analyse the various routes by which racist ideas travelled before maturing into murderous ideologies in the modern western world. In so doing this book offers a major reassessment of the place of racism in pre-modern European thought.
348 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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November 29, 2009
This is a rare example of a book emerging from a social science symposium which contains informative, well written articles which deserving a wide readership amongst a non-specialist audience.
Emerging from a gathering of scholars which met to discuss racism in European society before 1700, the central spine of the discussion is patently Benjamin Isaac’s thesis, set out in his 2004 book The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, which argued that a prototype form of racism could be identified in the work of leading thinkers in the Greek and Roman tradition. This implicitly challenged the work of other historians of racism – notably Americo Castro – who insisted on much more recent origins, in the positive science movement of the 19th century.
For the modernists, the undoubted prejudices which people of earlier times exhibited towards one another could certainly reach horrific proportions; but it wasn’t racism in the only sense in which it can be meaningfully discussed. To be specifically racist was to see the differences between human beings as immutable, rooted in either biology or a psycho-cultural framework which could not be transcended either by the group or an individual. These essential components of the biological and psycho-cultural could only be sustained by modern minds immersed in the scientific legacy of Darwin and his less reputable followers.
In a chapter which recounts the arguments from his earlier work, Isaac’s sets out the argument that earlier artefacts of the western tradition had contained components which played a similar role to later positivist science, in its attempts to systematise procedures of inquiry and the rules for reaching conclusions. Aristotle’s Politics provides an example of this method, in the sections which discuss the differences between Greeks, Persians, and the barbarian people who inhabited the dark forests of northern and western Europe.
But was this an isolated passage in the work of the philosopher, or did it reveal an outlook which extended more widely into the Greek society of Antiquity? The gap between intellectuals and the rest of society in this society was great and the type of discussions which stimulated the male elites as their hard-drinking symposia might not have penetrated into the homes and workshops of the artisan classes, much less the slave populations. A millennium later the semblance of a common culture linking the thinking rulers with the mass of the population has been forged, in the form of the universal Christian religion. Famously knowing, in Paul’s words, “neither Jew nor Greek ...neither slave nor free... no male and female”, the Church strove to accommodate all within its dominion.
But this did leave the question of those who remained stubbornly on the outside of the hope of salvation, with the unconverted Jews looming largest of all as a problem for the new religion. Denise Kimber Buell sets out the predicament of early Christian attempts to locate themselves in relation to their parent religion. She finds aspects of the way this task was addressed, involving forms of logic which where analogous to racist modes of thought.
Other chapters deal with the emergence of scientific modes of thought in the later medieval period and into early modernity. It was within the practices of husbandry in the aristocratic households of France and Spain, involving the rearing of horses, falcons and hunting dogs, that the notion of ‘race’ first emerged as a concept capable of being applied in a scientific manner. The potential for the transference of these notions to human stock however was inhibited by the conviction that human nature was predominantly mutable, shaped by powerful external influences. The Church insisted on this: to have accepted otherwise would have meant accepting that there were types of people permanently beyond the hope of salvation.
The sense which emerges from reading these essays is that something we can think of as a type of racism can be identified in many versions of systematised, analytical thinking, of a philosophical, theological or scientific kind, and this can be demonstrated continuously since the time of antiquity.
But these proto-racist outlooks remained confined to either elite cultures or heretical religious currents. The dominant conviction amongst the thinking classes was that the condition of humanity was marked by its capacity for change and improvement ran deep not just amongst thinkers, and this extended to the hoards of ordinary people who enrolled in the ranks of mainstream Christianity.
At what point, therefore, was the boundary between proto- and fully-fledged racism crossed? The final essays hint at an answer which suggests that this had less to do with the rise of positivist science, than with modern forms of imperialism and colonialism. The protagonists of these new movements had reasons to be concerned about the proposition that human beings changed in accordance with the pressures of their environment. If this was the case, what was to stop the conquistadores and their creole descendents ‘falling’ to the level of the native people they were encountering?
For the imperial mission to be fulfilled, the idea of mutable human nature had to be ditched. The Europeans needed to be inoculated against the threat of change and absorption into the ranks of the alien other, and a doctrine of innate superiority was required to buttress this conviction. By a different route we arrive at a similar conclusion: that fully fledged racism is a child of the modern period, but whose birth was facilitated by colonial conquest, rather than science.
Emerging from a gathering of scholars which met to discuss racism in European society before 1700, the central spine of the discussion is patently Benjamin Isaac’s thesis, set out in his 2004 book The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, which argued that a prototype form of racism could be identified in the work of leading thinkers in the Greek and Roman tradition. This implicitly challenged the work of other historians of racism – notably Americo Castro – who insisted on much more recent origins, in the positive science movement of the 19th century.
For the modernists, the undoubted prejudices which people of earlier times exhibited towards one another could certainly reach horrific proportions; but it wasn’t racism in the only sense in which it can be meaningfully discussed. To be specifically racist was to see the differences between human beings as immutable, rooted in either biology or a psycho-cultural framework which could not be transcended either by the group or an individual. These essential components of the biological and psycho-cultural could only be sustained by modern minds immersed in the scientific legacy of Darwin and his less reputable followers.
In a chapter which recounts the arguments from his earlier work, Isaac’s sets out the argument that earlier artefacts of the western tradition had contained components which played a similar role to later positivist science, in its attempts to systematise procedures of inquiry and the rules for reaching conclusions. Aristotle’s Politics provides an example of this method, in the sections which discuss the differences between Greeks, Persians, and the barbarian people who inhabited the dark forests of northern and western Europe.
But was this an isolated passage in the work of the philosopher, or did it reveal an outlook which extended more widely into the Greek society of Antiquity? The gap between intellectuals and the rest of society in this society was great and the type of discussions which stimulated the male elites as their hard-drinking symposia might not have penetrated into the homes and workshops of the artisan classes, much less the slave populations. A millennium later the semblance of a common culture linking the thinking rulers with the mass of the population has been forged, in the form of the universal Christian religion. Famously knowing, in Paul’s words, “neither Jew nor Greek ...neither slave nor free... no male and female”, the Church strove to accommodate all within its dominion.
But this did leave the question of those who remained stubbornly on the outside of the hope of salvation, with the unconverted Jews looming largest of all as a problem for the new religion. Denise Kimber Buell sets out the predicament of early Christian attempts to locate themselves in relation to their parent religion. She finds aspects of the way this task was addressed, involving forms of logic which where analogous to racist modes of thought.
Other chapters deal with the emergence of scientific modes of thought in the later medieval period and into early modernity. It was within the practices of husbandry in the aristocratic households of France and Spain, involving the rearing of horses, falcons and hunting dogs, that the notion of ‘race’ first emerged as a concept capable of being applied in a scientific manner. The potential for the transference of these notions to human stock however was inhibited by the conviction that human nature was predominantly mutable, shaped by powerful external influences. The Church insisted on this: to have accepted otherwise would have meant accepting that there were types of people permanently beyond the hope of salvation.
The sense which emerges from reading these essays is that something we can think of as a type of racism can be identified in many versions of systematised, analytical thinking, of a philosophical, theological or scientific kind, and this can be demonstrated continuously since the time of antiquity.
But these proto-racist outlooks remained confined to either elite cultures or heretical religious currents. The dominant conviction amongst the thinking classes was that the condition of humanity was marked by its capacity for change and improvement ran deep not just amongst thinkers, and this extended to the hoards of ordinary people who enrolled in the ranks of mainstream Christianity.
At what point, therefore, was the boundary between proto- and fully-fledged racism crossed? The final essays hint at an answer which suggests that this had less to do with the rise of positivist science, than with modern forms of imperialism and colonialism. The protagonists of these new movements had reasons to be concerned about the proposition that human beings changed in accordance with the pressures of their environment. If this was the case, what was to stop the conquistadores and their creole descendents ‘falling’ to the level of the native people they were encountering?
For the imperial mission to be fulfilled, the idea of mutable human nature had to be ditched. The Europeans needed to be inoculated against the threat of change and absorption into the ranks of the alien other, and a doctrine of innate superiority was required to buttress this conviction. By a different route we arrive at a similar conclusion: that fully fledged racism is a child of the modern period, but whose birth was facilitated by colonial conquest, rather than science.
January 17, 2012
Specially the chapter by Canizares-Esguerra: "Demons, Stars and the imagination".
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews