The Origins of Racism in the West

This book is a major reassessment of the place of racism in pre-modern European thought.

Miriam Eliav-Feldon (Edited by), Benjamin Isaac (Edited by), Joseph Ziegler (Edited by)

9781107687264, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 August 2013

348 pages, 42 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.47 kg

'… contains informative, well written articles which deserving a wide readership amongst a non-specialist audience.' Chartist

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. In this book, 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.

1. Introduction Benjamin Isaac, Joseph Ziegler and Miriam Eliav-Feldon
2. Racism: a rationalization of prejudice in Greece and Rome Benjamin Isaac
3. The invention of Persia in classical Athens H. A. Shapiro
4. Racism, color symbolism, and color prejudice David Goldenberg
5. Early Christian universalism and modern forms of racism Denise Kimber Buell
6. Illustrating ethnicity in the Middle Ages Robert Bartlett
7. Proto-racial thought in medieval science Peter Biller
8. Physiognomy, science, and proto-racism 1200–1500 Joseph Ziegler
9. Noble dogs, noble blood: the invention of the concept of race in the late Middle Ages Charles de Miramon
10. The carnal knowing of a coloured body. Sleeping with Arabs and Blacks in the European imagination, 1300–1550 Valentin Groebner
11. Was there race before modernity? The example of 'Jewish' blood in late-medieval Spain David Nirenberg
12. Religion and race: Protestant and Catholic discourses on Jewish conversions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Ronnie Po-chia Hsia
13. Vagrants or vermin? Attitudes towards Gypsies in Early-Modern Europe Miriam Eliav-Feldon
14. The peopling of the New World: ethnos, race and empire in the Early-Modern world Anthony Pagden
15. Demons, stars, and the imagination: the Early-Modern body in the Tropics Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Religion: general [HRA], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], European history [HBJD]