Identities: Race
Roberta Bivins
MMW Week 18
‘Race’ as a historical identity
and identifier
• When can we reasonably begin to talk
about ‘race’ as a factor in culture, society,
politics, science, etc?
‘Race’ Before the Modern
Period
Key pre-modern concepts and uses of ‘race’
• Gens: translated as ‘blood’ ‘stock’ and
‘family’ as well as ‘race’, ‘nation’, ‘tribe’ and
‘people’
• Natio: ‘nation’ (often in the context of
geography or religious identity)
• Term ‘Race’ not used in English before
c.1520, from Fr. ‘Razza’ = group, type of
people
NB: Understandings of ‘race’, in pre-modern -- as well as in
modern history at least until the 20th c. -- are not
ontologically rooted in physical difference (i.e. of skin
pigmentation) alone.
John of Fordun, Chronica gentis Scottorum, c. 1360
The manners of the Scots vary according to their language,
for they employ two languages, Scottish [Gaelic] and
Teutonic [Scots/English]. The race [gens] of Teutonic
language has the sea coasts and lowlands, that of Scottish
language inhabits the mountainous areas and the outer
isles. The race [gens] of the sea coasts is domesticated,
civilized, faithful, patient, cultivated, decently dressed,
refined and peaceable, devout in church worship, yet
always ready to withstand any harm done by its enemies.
The island or mountain race [gens], however, is wild,
untamed, primitive, intractable, inclined to plunder, leisureloving, quick to learn, skilful, handsome in appearance but
vilely dressed, and continually fiercely opposed to the
English people [populo] and language, but also to their own
nation [nationi], on account of the difference of language.
The roots of ‘race’: race as ‘blood’
For myself, I accept the view that the peoples of
Germany have never contaminated themselves
by intermarriage with foreigners but remain of
pure blood, distinct and unlike any other nation.
One result of this is that their physical
characteristics, in so far as one can generalize
about such a large population, are always the
same: fierce-looking blue eyes, reddish hair, and
big frames.
Tacitus, Germania 4; 18. First Century CE
The roots of ‘race’:
‘Race’ as geographic and climatological
Those that dwell in the east part, on
them the sun and the hot sky shine all
day long, so that they are as black as
foam from pitch. These nations lie at the
edge, and are in their own governance. . .
Kyng Alisaunder, circa early 14th c
The Catalan Atlas, 1375
Inset detail: Prester John
The roots of ‘race’:
race as religion/culture
His skin, that had been black and loathsome,
became all white, through God’s grace, and
was spotless without blemish. And when the
sultan saw that sight, well he believed on
almighty God. . . Scarcely did she (his wife)
recognize her lord. Then she well knew in her
mind that he did not believe at all in
Mohammed, for his color was entirely
changed…
Cursor Mundi ca. 1325
Monogenesis and Human Difference
• ‘Whoever is anywhere born a man, that is, a
rational mortal animal, no matter what unusual
appearance he presents . . . no Christian can
doubt that he springs from that one protoplast . .
. if they are human, they are descended from
Adam.’ Augustine of Hippo, c. 5th c AD
• ‘In general you will find assimilated to the nature
of the land both the physique and the
characteristics of the inhabitants.’ Airs, Waters,
Places [Hippocratic Corpus, c 5th c AD]
Racial attitudes in the ‘age of discovery’
• Theories of monogenesis make it difficult to see Africans
and Amerindians as sub-human
• ‘[Africans are] very black; but the features of their faces,
and their excellent teeth, being white as ivory, make up
together a handsom ayre, and taking comliness of a new
beauty’ John Ogilby, Africa (1670)
• ‘[Indians are] a sort of white men in America (as I am
told) that only differ from us in having no beards’
Richard Bradley, A Philosophical account of the works of
nature (London, 1721)
• ‘[Africans are] black as coal. Here, thro’ custom, (being
Christians) they account themselves white men’ Journal
of a Voyage up the Gambia (London, 1723)
• Importance of context, eg Europeans treat Africans
differently in Africa to how they treat them in the
Americas.
From Atlas
Geographus
(London,
1711)
diff continents
embodied by
dress as much
as colour
From, A
collection of
voyages and
travels
(London,
1745)
New views of race
• The first difference which strikes us is that of colour… the difference is
fixed in nature. …Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are
other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less
hair on the face and body…They seem to require less sleep. A black,
after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest
amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be
out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and
more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of
forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present.
When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or
steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but
love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender
delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the state of Virginia (London, 1787)
• ‘There appears in savages a natural and rooted aversion to a civilised
state… by the efforts of their natural genius alone, they never would
have raised themselves above their original character’ David Doig, Two
Letters on the Savage State (London, 1793)
Physical difference through African eyes
‘They [Fulani women] rallied me with a good deal of gaiety…
on the whiteness of my skin and the prominence of my nose.
They insisted that both were artificial. The first, they said, was
produced … by dipping me in milk; and they insisted that my
nose had been pinched every day, till it had acquired its
present unsightly and unnatural conformation.’ Mungo Park,
1796
‘The sight of white men threw them into fits of convulsive
laughter.’ John Campbell, 1822
‘He [Shaka Zulu] said that the first forefathers of the
Europeans had bestowed on us many gifts … yet they had
kept from us the greatest of all gifts, such as a good black
skin, for this does not necessitate the wearing of clothes to
hide the white skin, which was not pleasant to the eye.’ Henry
Francis Fynn, c. 1824
‘Race’ as a historical identity
and identifier
• When does ‘race’ as we understand it
today emerge, and what key concepts are
involved?
Attributes of modern, ‘scientific’ ‘race’:
– Biological and hereditary
– Immutable
– Physically rather than culturally and
linguistically marked
– Implicitly and often explicitly hierarchical
Josiah Clark Nott, Types of
Mankind, 1854
‘Race’ in modern history:
Useful Concepts and terms
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‘Great Chain of Being’
Monogenism/polygenism
‘recapitulation’
Evolution
Nature/nurture
Essentialism
(Biological) determinism
Relativism
‘Race’ as a historical identity
and identifier
• What intellectual, social, political factors
make ‘race’ historically interesting?
‘Race’ in
practice:
the slavery
debates
‘Whipped Slave’ Harper’s Weekly, 1863
Race in
Practice: The
History of
Science
‘Facial angles’ Petrus Camper, 1790
The Racial Sciences
• Comparative anatomy: anatomical studies drawing
their analytical power and results from comparisons
between human-animal, or human-human (sexual or
racial) comparisons
• Phrenology: the scientific study and categorization of
the shape of the skull to predict character and
characteristics
• Craniometry science devoted to the measurement of
the skull (initially externally, subsequently internally) and
correlation of such measurements to mental traits and
abilities
• Anthropometry
• Anthropology: esp. physical anthropology
‘Race’ in
practice: Empire
The White
Man’s Burden
“Take up the White Man's
burden-Send forth the best ye
breedGo, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives'
need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-Your new-caught sullen
peoples,
Half devil and half child.”
Rudyard Kipling, ‘The
White Man’s Burden’,
1899
WHOSE burden?
"The White (?)
Man’s Burden"
The "white”
colonial powers
being carried as
the burden of their
"colored” subjects.
First printed in Life,
March 16, 1899.
‘Race’ in
practice:
Immigration
Race in
th
20
c UK
Race as an analytical tool
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Emergence of ‘race history’
Analogies with ‘gender’
‘Race’ and ‘orientalism’
‘Identity politics’ and ‘Identity history’
What USE is ‘race’ in history?