Racisms is the first comprehensive history of racism, from the Crusades to the twentieth century. Demonstrating that there is not one continuous tradition of racism, Francisco Bethencourt shows that racism preceded any theories of race and must be viewed within the prism and context of social hierarchies and local conditions. In this richly illustrated book, Bethencourt argues that in its various aspects, all racism has been triggered by political projects monopolizing specific economic and social resources.
Racisms focuses on the Western world, but opens comparative views on ethnic discrimination and segregation in Asia and Africa. Bethencourt looks at different forms of racism, and explores instances of enslavement, forced migration, and ethnic cleansing, while analyzing how practices of discrimination and segregation were defended.
This is a major interdisciplinary work that moves away from ideas of linear or innate racism and recasts our understanding of interethnic relations.
"In this richly illustrated study, Bethencourt defines racism as prejudice based on ethnic descent that is supported by discriminatory measures driven by political motivations. . . . Although Europe constitutes Bethencourt's focal point, he draws on examples of racism from Africa, Asia, and the Americas as points of comparison and context."--Choice
"Francisco Bethencourt's Racisms could not be more timely . . . Bethencourt's incisive analysis ought to be compulsory reading in the think tanks, chanceries and ministries of the developed world."--Maria Misra, Prospect
"This beautifully produced and richly illustrated book is a complex cross between an erudite essay on Western ideas about cultural, ethnic, religious, and racial differences, and a detailed accounting of European history and European contact with the rest of the world since the Middle Ages."--Stuart B. Schwartz, New West Indian Guide
"Epic in scale and ringing with authority."--Steven Carroll, Age
"Racisms impresses the reader by its author's vast reading, his thoroughness and precision, his intellectual ambition, and his use of visual and textual sources."--Peter Burke, University of Cambridge
"There will probably never be a consensus about the origins, nature, chronology, and future of racism. Now, however, thanks to Francisco Bethencourt's brave, reflective, provocative, painstaking, and searching history, the problems are clearer than ever before, and the continuing debates will be immeasurably better informed."--Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of 1492: The Year the World Began
"For those who are already working on racism, or who are at the very least acquainted with it, the book should prove a very useful tool in locating specific work within a larger historical landscape. It serves as a very strong call to open one's historical horizons, both temporally and geographically, which can only improve one's work. In this sense, Racisms is well worth reading. It represents a welcome contribution to the growing body of work on the topic by debunking some very persistent myths about it."--Philippe-Andre Rodriguez, Oxonian Review
"[A]mbitious and wide-ranging. . . . Racisms['s] cataloguing of successive centuries of poisonous bigotry, of tangled, self-serving myth and murderous victimisation, creates a powerful cumulative effect. To chart some of my own emotions while reading it: anger; pain, disgust and sorrow. This is an unlovely history. But a necessary one that appears, sadly for the wrong reasons, at the right time."--Ekow Eshun, Independent
"Racisms is a weighty tome in every sense of the word: the book reflects the scholarship and attention to detail of the dedicated academic as well as the writing of a man deeply sensitive to the moral and ethical issues involved."--Ed Standhaft, Methodist Recorder
"No short review can do justice to this dazzlingly learned and ambitious book."--Stephen J. Whitfield, Patterns of Prejudice
"Racisms is a superb monograph, well served by excellent illustrations."--Survival
"[A]nalytically sophisticated. . . . Bethencourt tacks deftly between cultural and social history. His binocular vision marks Racisms out from most previous studies."--David Armitage, Times Literary Supplement
"Although Bethencourt's writings are grounded in academia, Racisms is a highly accessible and lively account that should appeal to a wide audience--a work that, while not being too sophisticated for the average person to read and appreciate for the multiple insights that it provides, makes for just as worthy an undergraduate text."--Lois Henderson, BookPleasures.com
"Bethencourt has done an admirable job sifting through history to produce this broad survey of the evolution of racial thought, always tying each development back to the political projects it was meant to facilitate and thereby illustrating the emptiness of race as an ontological category. Racisms not only pulls regularly from primary sources, such as travel narratives or scientific reports, but it is also richly peppered with images that bring to life the shifting perception of race through the centuries."--Guy Lancaster, Journal of History and Cultures
"[W]ell worth reading."--Christie Davies, Standpoint
"Bethencourt, professor of history at King's College London, examines how expansion abroad shaped European systems of ethnic prejudice in a tour de force spanning the Americas, West Africa, India, and other colonial environs."--Publishers Weekly
"To understand what fuelled such racist ideologies and practices, I can think of no better book than Francisco Bethencourt's Racisms. It is an ambitious, bold project. . . . Bethencourt addresses the 'scientific' turn in racial classification systems. There is a vast literature on the ideas of influential men such as . . . Charles Darwin and many others. However, Bethencourt's summary is the clearest and most sophisticated to date. . . . [An] impressive book."--Joanna Bourke, New Statesman
List of Maps xii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Part I The Crusades 11
Chapter 1 From Greek to Muslim Perceptions 13
Chapter 2 Christian Reconquest 19
Chapter 3 Universalism: Integration and Classification 37
Chapter 4 Typologies of Humankind and Models of Discrimination 48
Part II Oceanic Exploration 63
Chapter 5 Hierarchies of Continents and Peoples 65
Chapter 6 Africans 83
Chapter 7 Americans 101
Chapter 8 Asians 117
Chapter 9 Europeans 137
Part III Colonial Societies 159
Chapter 10 Ethnic Classification 163
Chapter 11 Ethnic Structure 181
Chapter 12 Projects and Policies 204
Chapter 13 Discrimination and Segregation 216
Chapter 14 Abolitionism 228
Part IV The Theories of Race 247
Chapter 15 Classifications of Humans 252
Chapter 16 Scientific Racialism 271
Chapter 17 Darwin and Social Evolution 290
Part V Nationalism and Beyond 307
Chapter 18 The Impact of Nationalism 309
Chapter 19 Global Comparisons 335
Conclusions 365
Notes 375
Index 423
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