Race and Racism
- LAST REVIEWED: 31 January 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 10 March 2015
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0163
- LAST REVIEWED: 31 January 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 10 March 2015
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0163
Introduction
It has become an acknowledged commonplace that “race” and the other entities from and against which it has been defined—“racism” and “racialism”—are historically and culturally constructed. While it is recognized that race is a spurious concept with no scientific basis, the social reality of racism is impossible—and dangerous—to ignore. The role played by the opening of the Atlantic world in the development of the theory and practice of race and racism was profound. Beginning in the mid-15th century, a wider range of peoples, cultures, and colors were brought into closer interaction than ever before. The existence of a hitherto unknown population on a hitherto unknown continent posed serious questions, resulting in a flurry of intellectual and social activity that created, defined, and reified differences between peoples. Sexual interaction between peoples of the Atlantic world soon produced new populations through a process of ethnogenesis and resulted in the application of older thinking to new problems. One example was the use of Spanish concepts of purity of blood (limpieza de sangre), originally developed to root out supposedly insincere converts of Jewish or Muslim origin, in a new colonial sistema de castas. Sexual interaction between groups not merely of different ethnic origin but within the same social rank (especially the “blue-blooded” nobility) as well as colonial domination both near and far (particularly in early modern Ireland) also resulted in the development of concepts of whiteness. At the same time as these ideas were elaborated, they were supported by a growing sense of substantial difference between peoples who were, in varying degrees, susceptible to European or tropical diseases. Demographic catastrophe only reinforced the importance of examining the origins of native Americans, even if it was speculation on those of Africans that was most recognizably racist to modern eyes. This is, no doubt, because such speculations went hand-in-hand with the development of one of the most monstrous racist abuses in world history, the transatlantic slave trade. Complicating this picture, however, is the fact that such activity could take place within a theological worldview that held that all the world’s peoples had sprung from the same origin. Productive conceptualizations of racism, therefore, have distinguished the concept from individual prejudice or even ethnocentrism through its institutionalization within authoritative discourses (concerning the body or the law/state, for example) and through its efforts to rationalize a fundamentally irrational prejudice. With the debunking of its claims to biological reality, it arguably lives on by having culture perform the function that science can no longer fulfill.
Primary Sources and Data Sources
Several excellent collections of primary sources on race and racism exist, many of which are available online. Most of these relate to slavery, but the broad range of such resources allows scholars to explore different aspects of racist practice within the “peculiar institution.” Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database contains detailed information on the vast majority of transatlantic slave voyages undertaken between the 16th and 19th centuries and has proven useful for scholarly efforts to assess the accuracy of Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography, to give one example. The institutional apparatus supporting slavery is well covered in Slaves and the Courts, 1740–1860, which contains images and full text of (mostly American) pamphlets that deal with individual slave cases, including the Dred Scott case. The full range of arguments for and against slavery is contained in the collection of pamphlets held by the library of Anti-Slavery International, available online in Recovered Histories. The bulk of these date from the 1820s to the 1850s and offer an insight into one of the most fruitful periods in the history of racist thought. Also useful for charting the interrelation of racist theory and practice is Empire Online, a wide-ranging (if selective) online resource containing printed and manuscript sources. Richer for later centuries, this database nonetheless offers material on early modern Ireland, an important locus of racism. An indispensable anthology of racial texts is Loomba and Burton 2007, which offers selections not simply of vital texts but of earlier works that provided source material and inspiration for these. The chronological focus of this collection (1510s–1699) reflects the recent drift to locating the origins of race in the Early Modern period. Ranging beyond concepts of race to practices of racism, the collections of primary sources offered in Conrad 1983 and Quinn 1979 are particularly useful for tracing European interactions with Native Americans and African slaves in (respectively) Brazil and the Americas more generally. Alden and Landis 1980–1988 is an invaluable guide to European printed works on America for almost the entire period of the existence of the Atlantic world, with vitally important indexes.
Alden, John, and Dennis C. Landis, eds. European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493–1776. 6 vols. New York: Readex, 1980–1988.
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Not strictly on race or racism but a comprehensive bibliography of European texts on America, which contains many of the works used by racial thinkers or contain contemporary discussions of race and racism. Of particular use are the subject, geographical (of printers and booksellers), and alphabetical (including printers and booksellers) indexes.
Conrad, Robert Edgar. Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
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Wide-ranging selection of mostly unpublished primary sources on slavery and the slave trade to and within Brazil. Contains useful selections on the urban lives of slaves, relations between races, and legal aspects of slavery.
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Subscription website containing a wide range of digitized print and manuscript sources on empire. Of particular interest is Section 5 (“Race, Class, Imperialism and Colonization, 1607–2007”), which contains essays, pamphlets, government papers, maps, and extracts from books. Most of these are from the 19th and 20th centuries, but there is much material on early modern Ireland.
Loomba, Ania, and Jonathan Burton, eds. Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary Companion. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2007.
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Very broad selection of primary sources on race, ranging from Aesop’s Fables (6th century BCE) to Edward Tyson (1699), although the primary focus is on the period 1519–1699. Contains an excellent introduction and useful translations of extracts from works in ancient and modern European languages.
Quinn, David B., ed. New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612. 5 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1979.
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Encyclopedic collection of documents ranging from ancient geography to the settlement of Virginia. Several chapters contain useful documents on Native Americans and relations with Europeans, although there is less information on Africans.
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Website containing digital copies of almost eight hundred pamphlets held at the library of Anti-Slavery International, dating from the early 18th to the early 20th centuries (the bulk was produced 1820–1850). Contains much information on American and British slavery debates, including proslavery and early racialist texts, and government inquiries.
Slaves and the Courts, 1740–1860.
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Digitized collection of just over one hundred pamphlets on slavery and the law (both within and outside the courtroom). Contains much material on celebrated cases, such as Dred Scott v. Sandford and the trial of John Brown, and a manuscript copy of the District of Columbia Slave Code (1860).
Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.
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Based on a CD-ROM project first published by Cambridge University Press in 1999, this open-access database has details on almost 35,000 (of an estimated 43,600) transatlantic slaving voyages from 1514 to the mid-19th century. Users can search by a wide range of variables and generate tables of statistics from the dataset.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos South Atlantic Creole A...
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets