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, leisure-loving, 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.

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 ‘blood’

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 roots of ‘race’: ‘Race’ as geographic and climatological

The Catalan Atlas, 1375 Inset detail: Prester John

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

The roots of ‘race’: race as religion/culture

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

• ‘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 breed-

Go, bind your sons to exileTo 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 20th c UK

Race as an analytical tool

• Emergence of ‘race history’

• Analogies with ‘gender’

• ‘Race’ and ‘orientalism’

• ‘Identity politics’ and ‘Identity history’

What USE is ‘race’ in history?