Race is part of any discussion today of the interactions of people of European, African, Asian, and Indian descent. But at the dawn of globalization modern concepts of race didn’t exist. Fighting off the yoke of African Islamic empires, the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula didn’t, as a rule, kill or enslave “blacks,” they killed and enslaved “Moors” or “infidels” or “idolaters.” At the beginning, slavery had little racial baggage; the question that preoccupied Spaniards was not whether “black” or “red” people could be enslaved but whether Christians could be put in bondage; heathens,
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