Multiculturalism and Racism in the Ancient World

[Lexicus]

Roman aristocracy was less monolithic than previously, in the sense than non-Italians, non-Senatorial Romans had increased authority. Non-Romans, even those who today we would consider Romans (such as Stilicho) were firmly distrusted by the Roman elite were kept as far away from power as possible. The Senatorial elite even refused to acknowledge Alaric the Goth as dux Pannonia -a useless region rendered even more useless by decades of barbarians and bandits camping out there- even though he was camping with an army outside the walls of Rome for what appears to be the fact Alaric was not Roman.

I feel like this pretty much supports my argument.

Certainly not in the ancient world: around Rome and Pompeii, at least, they have found items associated with all kinds of religions (the state religion, Judaism (and perhaps Christianity, though most of that evidence is controversial, I think), Egyptian religions, various loosely-Persian religions and even Hinduism) jumbled up together.

Hell, the Roman religion was willing to outright absorb foreign gods into its pantheon and cults to various foreign gods sprang up in Rome particularly in the later Republic. This was a source of considerable annoyance to politicians like Cato the Elder who decried the foreign influences and considered the adoption of Greek culture by the Roman ruling class to be a sort of 'sissification' of Rome.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

The Chinese government is dead set on having a Han China. They do not tolerate minorities, they actively surpress them. They would do anything to skew the statistics. If you want a very good overview of how China is composed ethnicaly just look at the spoken languages. It gives you the best overview:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China

However, there are many different ways how China skews its statistics. Entire peoples are being "Hanified". People are resettled, ethnicities are outbred or, even easier, they just mingle, lose their sovereignity and are declared Han. No one is asked and no one really cares aside from the ones that make the statistics. "Han" is barely even a concrete group. Just an example:

So not all of the supposed "Han" Chinese even self-identify as Han. I will not act like I am an expert on the topic of Chinese ethnic minorities though, so I will shut up now. Sorry for the long rant, but I hate when people simplify very complex issues like you did with China.

Some good points, but you missed the big one. Ethnicity is also an abstraction like race, and it's always fluctuating. The Chinese pride themselves on the continuitiy of their civilization, even though it has gone through many civil wars and was often divided into smaller states. It always reunified eventually, and this cycle of reunification has created the Han ethnicity in the Chinese consciusness which has displaced older ethnicities, just like the French and German ethnic identities have displaced older tribal identities. It's not really based on genetics. Chinese people from different provinces also look pretty different if you pay attention. North Chinese are considerably taller on average, just like Scandinavians are taller than Italians, and in south China people also tend to have smaller noses and more narrow eyes.

I think if Europe's history had been similar, Roman could have become an "ethnicity".
We'd have millions of people still self-identifying as Roman, whether they were born in Carthage or Paris or Prague or Tirana.

 

[Ajidica]

@Lexicus @Flying Pig : That's the problem with these threads, I don't have anything to really disagree with you on! I tend to favor Halsall's take that Ammianus overstates the level of barbarians in the Roman Army*, but I also fully understand that questions like that are probably impossible to answer.

*I was under the impression that Adrianople occurred later in Ammianus's life and his tendency to pine for the "good old days" was becoming more pronounced the older and crotchetier he got.

 

[Flying Pig]

@Lexicus @Flying Pig : That's the problem with these threads, I don't have anything to really disagree with you on! I tend to favor Halsall's take that Ammianus overstates the level of barbarians in the Roman Army*, but I also fully understand that questions like that are probably impossible to answer.

*I was under the impression that Adrianople occurred later in Ammianus's life and his tendency to pine for the "good old days" was becoming more pronounced the older and crotchetier he got.

Yes, we really need some people on here who don't agree with Halsall... Possibly true on Ammianus: there's certainly a strong trend for 'good old days' thinking throughout his work, though there aren't a lot of Roman writers who don't have that.

I don't think anyone actually knows when Ammianus died - his book finishes shortly after Adrianople (though there's good reason to suspect that the massacre of the Goths happened months or years, not days as he implies, after the battle), so that gives the last definite date for which he must have been alive. He describes himself as a 'former soldier', which probably means he served 20 or 25 years, but you can imagine him sitting down to write at 45, being done by 50, and still having many more years to get more crotchety.

I'm currently reading David Mattingly's (much recommended) book on Roman Britain, and he puts a slightly different spin on things. Talking about the garrisons of northern Britain (he doesn't explicitly say, but the evidence is mostly 2nd-century), he notes that several units seem to have had their 'homes' and done most of their recruiting in the Rhineland, particularly among a tribe called the Batavi. However, they also seem to have topped up their manpower with volunteers from the villages and towns around their camps on Hadrian's Wall. However, when people did join the army, they often took on Roman names (in fact, a lot of the way that he can spot this happening is because many of the names are far too impeccably Roman to belong to common soldiers), changed their dress and appearance, started speaking a distinctively military strand of Latin and usually acquiring new gods, cooking practices, and you name it. Even the troops from Germany, Italy and Africa often married British women and retired to Britain. So it becomes a lot more complicated than a place with regiments of 'Romans' stationed among crowds of 'Natives', and I think that sort of messiness is a good way to look at it. It's all people who are sort-of British, sort-of Roman, sort-of something in the middle, with 'Roman' identity and culture only coming through a lot of intermediate steps. Moreover, most 'Romans' in Britain were soldiers, whose Romanitas was designed explicitly to mark them as different from Roman civilians.

Thumbing through his bibliographical essay (he doesn't use footnotes, which leaves the odd assertion looking a bit bald), I can't actually see any mention of Halsall, though I'm sure this would be right up his street.

I think if Europe's history had been similar, Roman could have become an "ethnicity".
We'd have millions of people still self-identifying as Roman, whether they were born in Carthage or Paris or Prague or Tirana.

We certainly did in the Roman period. The most famous person to say civis Romanus sum was from Asia Minor.

 

[Yeekim]

That's the problem with these threads, I don't have anything to really disagree with you on!

Sort of nice really to have a (largely) non-partisan discussion thread that no-one is trying to "win" no matter what.
We used to have more of them...

 

[Lexicus]

We certainly did in the Roman period. The most famous person to say civis Romanus sum was from Asia Minor.

Wait, wasn't he born in Massachusetts??

 

[Flying Pig]

Being 'bigger than Jesus' in the sixties was a bit of a stretch, but you may right that 'bigger than Paul' was more manageable...

 

[sophie]

Some good points, but you missed the big one. Ethnicity is also an abstraction like race, and it's always fluctuating. The Chinese pride themselves on the continuitiy of their civilization, even though it has gone through many civil wars and was often divided into smaller states. It always reunified eventually, and this cycle of reunification has created the Han ethnicity in the Chinese consciusness which has displaced older ethnicities, just like the French and German ethnic identities have displaced older tribal identities. It's not really based on genetics. Chinese people from different provinces also look pretty different if you pay attention. North Chinese are considerably taller on average, just like Scandinavians are taller than Italians, and in south China people also tend to have smaller noses and more narrow eyes.

I think the bigger problem with this is that Chinese "unity" is itself a subjective position. What constitutes China and "Chinese people" has shrunk, grown, warped, shifted, and redefined itself over the milennia to fit the needs of being a "unified entity". In much the same way that Alsatians become alternatively Germans or French (to German and French generals/politicians/leaders) depending on who's trying to lay claim to the Rhineland in that instance.

It's rather like that joke from Grand Tour about British people and the hierarchy of ethnicities:

If a Scotsman does it and it's a good or notable thing, then that person is British
If a Scotsman does it and it's embarassing or evil, then that person is Scots

The delineation between ethnicity changes in the eye of [a nationalistic Englishman from the South] to fit the needs of the rhetorical or political point he's trying to make. It's important to remember that ethnicity never exists in a vacuum. It is something opted into by the individual for specific political or social reasons, and one confirmed or rejected by his peers for specific political or social reasons.

 

[Lexicus]

It's important to remember that ethnicity never exists in a vacuum. It is something opted into by the individual for specific political or social reasons, and one confirmed or rejected by his peers for specific political or social reasons.

This is like super true yo. And really important to keep repeating.

 

[innonimatu]

Let me give you a million examples of multi-ethnic empires:

China, every single iteration of it

The chinese were usually not "multi-ethnic". Theirs has been a history of Han expansion wiping out (literally, those mountains in southern china once had their own distinct populations and cultures) all the natives they met, except for those capable of beating them in the battlefield (the northern nomads, and for a time).

The Greek Empire at its peak

The Macedonians (Alexander apart, if we are to believe some ancient historians) despised their subjects in the newly conquered lands. They made a point of not marrying with them,

Europeans came to Africa. They established the "black race". Not one African had a saying in that. They also established the racial hierarchy. Blacks in Africa had no use for racism. They were never, ever united. Tribes and ethnicities were used as identification for them. Many things were associated with tribe and ethnicity. Race was an entirely meaningless concept for anyone but Europeans when it was invented.

The africans had no concept... isn't that the noble savages thing? Africans without any agency, europeans just came to Africa and did things - no.
The reality is that africans were as much aware of differences between them and the travelers from that other continent as the travelers were. That did not preclude trade, alliances, or war. What we now call "racism" as a concept is a 19th century development that was later projected backwards to apply to other somewhat similar attitudes regarding "different" foreign people, that got treated differently more due to religion and culture than skin color (which is not to say that skin color didn't play a part, as it became associated with cultural affinity expectations).
The single minded, obsessive focus on skin color, though, is a 19th century development. Slaves could be of any skin color, and many a "white european" became a slave in Africa roughly during the thousand years between 900 and 1900. It was indeed unusual for europeans to become enslaved in Europe, but that was because there existed an interdict against enslaving christians there. White pagans were fair game, but they became extinct early in the middle ages.
Slaves that converted to christianity posed a problem that early modern european societies argued a lot about. And so did the american natives, whether they were "pagan" and thus fair game, or ignorants of the true religions and thus not fair game for enslavement...

Well, by "different races living together" I mean that quite literally. I realize that those empires contained different ethnic groups, but wasn't it the case that they lived in their own areas? For example, I don't think we would see a multi-racial city like London back then. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think people really "immigrated" all that much back then and mostly kept to their "tribes".

I don't know about London. I do know that there were "multi-racial" (in our contemporary sense of "race") cities in the early modern age in Europe, as a result of the slave trade. You can see it in the paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries. The historical examples I know about are those of Lisbon. Slaves most definitely had an inferior social and legal status, in some matters horrifically so, and being mostly african (both black and moors) that status soon created a prejudice that associated their ethnic origin, recognizable by the skin color, with it. But there are records of indians, chinese, americans, turks, etc, as slaves during that period. The prejudices associated with such a (likely) origin did not prevent africans and their descendants from being or becoming free citizens and and climbing the social ladder, despite that prejudice. Skin color was not a barrier, culture was. A good example is a law from 1529 that orders "black women" to trade only by the doors of their masters instead of in the markets, but goes on to state that that there are many free black women in the city and exempts those from the prohibition. Thus, there was an association "black = slave", but also the recognition that even then there were already black non-slaves to whom legal discriminations should not apply.

Slaves were bough in to cities mostly to do the worst jobs, as the europeans that formerly did those jobs departed to risk their lives in colonial ventures. Migrations that in their purpose (not in the method) are not very removed from what goes on today in some "multi-cultural" cities. Later, as slavery was (gradually, slowly!) outlawed in Europe after the late-18th century, the freed slaves mingled with the inhabitants of the cities, their descendants becoming indistinguishable. But the process took some centuries, and started before the abolition. A rare qualifier regarding skin color in an 18th century legislative reasoning mentions "breeding slaves, some whiter than their owners" when deploring the continuation of slavery after the prohibition of slave imports. So this mix of "races" mostly happened before the pseudo-scientific "racial theories" showed up in the 19th century. I guess it would have been more difficult after those racial theories had taken hold.

Another interesting observation regarding "multi-cultural" life in early modern cities was the concert of chuch authorities with christianizing the imported slaves - now we talk about "integration" of immigrants. There were religious brotherhoods for providing mutual support, buying freedom and providing christian burials for their slave members, whatever the ethnic origin. There are also many parish records of intermarriage (and also concubinage, as the parishes complained of "sinful lives"...) between slaves of different ethnicities and between slaves and free citizens.
I am wondering off the original questions, so I'll end just by observing that slavery seems to me a very weird institution. I don't think it could have endured a few centuries in urban settings anywhere without somehow being "normalized" into the life of the inhabitants of the city, allowing for a mingling and the slow erosion of slavery itself. But then I think of stuff such as caste systems, similar to slavery, that endured thousands of years in some places, so I really don't know...

 

[Lexicus]

The africans had no concept... isn't that the noble savages thing? Africans without any agency, europeans just came to Africa and did things - no.

The single minded, obsessive focus on skin color, though, is a 19th century development.

A 19th century development - unquestionably developed by Europeans, not by Africans.

 

[Flying Pig]

The Macedonians (Alexander apart, if we are to believe some ancient historians) despised their subjects in the newly conquered lands. They made a point of not marrying with them,

The nobility, perhaps. Alexander famously organised a mass wedding where he married (another) Persian noblewoman and had his officers likewise take Persian brides. It's often repeated that nearly all of them divorced them soon afterwards, suggesting that they didn't share the boss's enthusiasm for the locals. However, less often repeated is the fact that Alexander also invited every Macedonian he could find who had already married a Persian. Plutarch says he ended up with nine thousand guests, which must have represented most of the Macedonians in the army, given the huge number of non-Macedonians serving in it by then.

 

[Kyriakos]

A number of greek cities were co-founded to some extent with local tribes, eg in France and Spain. Moreover there was co-operation with other tribes, as in the (very important for Athens) grain-trading colonies in the Crimean coast.
Some non-greek cities did go into alliance and/or heavily dealt with the greek world, famously the one non-greek city in Sicily, which according to Herodotus invited Athens to Sicily in the first place.
Naukratis (inside the actual egyptian realm) was co-founded by tens of greek cities AND Egypt itself, as a main trade organization post between Egypt and Greece.
Re 'every non-greek is a barbarian', yes, on the one hand it is referring to language (non-greek languages seemed to consist of heavy and crude sounds, as if they had their terms made up of the same 'bar' syllable; ie a german language basically ), on the other it refers to the non-greek civs not having either education for the population, higher-level teaching on issues of knowledge (eg the messopotamians, egyptians, persians and others had closed castes dealing with such issues), and having systems of absolute rule. Remember that in the greek world the usual political systems were aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny, with tyranny meaning exactly that one rose to power WITHOUT legally gaining favour through any of the three actual systems. Compare with satrapy-style rule in the persian world, or tribal whatever ( sorry ^^ ) in the west.

 

[innonimatu]

A 19th century development - unquestionably developed by Europeans, not by Africans.

True. But apart from the scientific trappings, that went with that age's obsession with classification and taxonomy, it was not a development much different from from others in antiquity. Not that different from the greeks vs. barbarians thing, or many other us vs. them. The 19th century racists just made it about some obvious and other alleged biological differences.
Japan developed its own racism, it was not a white one but it was also a "biological-cultural" one, only the "superiors" were the japanese... And if other people did not I fear it was just because they did not had a society capable of doing it: racism was an unfortunate result of combining two modes of thinking that were very influential at the time in the west" and in Japan: imperialism and scientific positivism (in the sense that fake science was created and accepted with little opposition).

We should at least learn from it, because both imperialism and positivism continue to be used and abused today.

 

[Traitorfish]

Your point is moot since every single empire in history "crumbled" at some point. That is why it's history, not the present.

I hope @Traitorfish comes out of his cave to school you on why exactly the Roman Empire crumbled, it had very little to do with Ethnic conflict. He once wrote an endless post on it and I definitely don't feel like repeating it. Maybe someone can point you towards it?

I'm flattered, but I'd guess this was probably Dachs or Owen. Classics are not my strong point!

The chinese were usually not "multi-ethnic". Theirs has been a history of Han expansion wiping out (literally, those mountains in southern china once had their own distinct populations and cultures) all the natives they met, except for those capable of beating them in the battlefield (the northern nomads, and for a time).

This history having been written by Han or near-Han states who stood to make political capital from framing their expansion in those terms. The reality is likely to have been more complicated, both in that Han states subsumed non-Han populations, and that non-Han populations would sometimes un-subsume themselves from Han rule. (It turns out, claiming descent from the Five Golden-Arsed Sovereigns tends to matter more to emperors than to peasants.)

True. But apart from the scientific trappings, that went with that age's obsession with classification and taxonomy, it was not a development much different from from others in antiquity. Not that different from the greeks vs. barbarians thing, or many other us vs. them. The 19th century racists just made it about some obvious and other alleged biological differences.

The difference is, what had previously been a matter of scholarly pedantry became a matter of state policy. Aristotle may have been willing to draw up a grand schematic of Man In His Many Forms, but most Greeks, including rulers, would simply have carried around a rough mental scale of "Talks Wrong" to "Talks Proper" and "Looks Funny" to "Looks Normal". The nineteenth century market the point at which academic pedantry were imposed by legislation and bayonet onto the workings of everyday life.

 

[Kyriakos]

I'm flattered, but I'd guess this was probably Dachs or Owen. Classics are not my strong point!


This history having been written by Han or near-Han states who stood to make political capital from framing their expansion in those terms. The reality is likely to have been more complicated, both in that Han states subsumed non-Han populations, and that non-Han populations would sometimes un-subsume themselves from Han rule. (It turns out, claiming descent from the Five Golden-Arsed Sovereigns tends to matter more to emperors than to peasants.)


The difference is, what had previously been a matter of scholarly pedantry became a matter of state policy. Aristotle may have been willing to draw up a grand schematic of Man In His Many Forms, but most Greeks, including rulers, would simply have carried around a rough mental scale of "Talks Wrong" to "Talks Proper" and "Looks Funny" to "Looks Normal". The nineteenth century market the point at which academic pedantry were imposed by legislation and bayonet onto the workings of everyday life.

Well, a very famous example of a person written down as looking "funny" (or like a goat, or other unsavory things) was Socrates. He also describes himself like that in various of the dialogues. And at times is eager to claim that others look like him, as an insult ^^ (eg against poor geometrician Theaetetos, in the eponymous dialogue).

 

[dutchfire]

@Owen Glyndwr

On that same note, there's the saying by Einstein:
Noch eine Art Anwendung des Relativitätsprinzips zum Ergötzen des Lesers: Heute werde ich in Deutschland als "deutscher Gelehrter", in England als "Schweizer Jude" bezeichnet; sollte ich aber einst in die Lage kommen, als "bète noire" präsentiert zu werden, dann wäre ich umgekehrt für die Deutschen ein „Schweizer Jude“, für die Engländer ein "deutscher Gelehrter".

Spoiler :

wikiquote translation By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, today in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be represented as a bête noire, the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Some good points, but you missed the big one. Ethnicity is also an abstraction like race, and it's always fluctuating. The Chinese pride themselves on the continuitiy of their civilization, even though it has gone through many civil wars and was often divided into smaller states. It always reunified eventually, and this cycle of reunification has created the Han ethnicity in the Chinese consciusness which has displaced older ethnicities, just like the French and German ethnic identities have displaced older tribal identities. It's not really based on genetics. Chinese people from different provinces also look pretty different if you pay attention. North Chinese are considerably taller on average, just like Scandinavians are taller than Italians, and in south China people also tend to have smaller noses and more narrow eyes.

You are certainly right about Ethnicity being an abstraction. The problem is the following: The only way to discuss so called ethnicities in at least a slightly objective way would be to go by DNA haplogroups. This however is really difficult unless you're an anthropologist. I prefer the term "ethnicity" over the term "race" for a multitude of reasons and I think, at least for the sake of discussion, that it is okay to use "ethnicity" to simplify things.

Nowhere was I trying to imply that ethnicity was grounded in biology, I think you simply misread my posts there. You made a great point - I was arguing how not all Chinese were "Han", precisely because they used to belong to a different "ethnicity" and were "Haninized". But ethnicity, after all, is honestly not much more than a feeling. And feelings change.

I still uphold my point about China being amulti-ethnic empire, simply because even modern day China still claims territories where people don't self-identify as Han, or even Chinese for that matter. Certainly the Tibetans don't, neither do many Uyghur people.

The Macedonians (Alexander apart, if we are to believe some ancient historians) despised their subjects in the newly conquered lands. They made a point of not marrying with them,
The africans had no concept... isn't that the noble savages thing? Africans without any agency, europeans just came to Africa and did things - no.
The reality is that africans were as much aware of differences between them and the travelers from that other continent as the travelers were. That did not preclude trade, alliances, or war. What we now call "racism" as a concept is a 19th century development that was later projected backwards to apply to other somewhat similar attitudes regarding "different" foreign people, that got treated differently more due to religion and culture than skin color (which is not to say that skin color didn't play a part, as it became associated with cultural affinity expectations).
The single minded, obsessive focus on skin color, though, is a 19th century development. Slaves could be of any skin color, and many a "white european" became a slave in Africa roughly during the thousand years between 900 and 1900. It was indeed unusual for europeans to become enslaved in Europe, but that was because there existed an interdict against enslaving christians there. White pagans were fair game, but they became extinct early in the middle ages.
Slaves that converted to christianity posed a problem that early modern european societies argued a lot about. And so did the american

So this mix of "races" mostly happened before the pseudo-scientific "racial theories" showed up in the 19th century. I guess it would have been more difficult after those racial theories had taken hold.

Another interesting observation regarding "multi-cultural" life in early modern cities was the concert of chuch authorities with christianizing the imported slaves - now we talk about "integration" of immigrants. There were religious brotherhoods for providing mutual support, buying freedom and providing christian burials for their slave members, whatever the ethnic origin. There are also many parish records of intermarriage (and also concubinage, as the parishes complained of "sinful lives"...) between slaves of different ethnicities and between slaves and free citizens.
I am wondering off the original questions, so I'll end just by observing that slavery seems to me a very weird institution. I don't think it could have endured a few centuries in urban settings anywhere without somehow being "normalized" into the life of the inhabitants of the city, allowing for a mingling and the slow erosion of slavery itself. But then I think of stuff such as caste systems, similar to slavery, that endured thousands of years in some places, so I really don't know...

I think I've already made my point about China. As for Macedonia, just a short reply will suffice. As I stated earlier ITT, I never said the empires I listed were anything but multi-ethnic/cultural. Not successfull, not necessarily nice to their "subjects", just that they existed, which Civver doubted. The Macedonians were not a good example for successful collaboration between "ethnicites", "cultures", with few exceptions.

As for Africa. First off, you are taking my post the wrong way. No one in Europe had even a concept of race until half a century ago. Maybe the word wasn't even around, who knows. So no, it wasn't "just Africans" who were oblivious about race. It was the entire globe. I dug this etymology of "race" up from a google search:

"people of common descent," a word from the 16th century, from Middle French race, earlier razza "race, breed, lineage, family" (16c.), possibly from Italian razza, of unknown origin (cognate with Spanish and Portuguese raza). Etymologists say no connection with Latin radix "root," though they admit this might have influenced the "tribe, nation" sense.

Original senses in English included "wines with characteristic flavor" (1520), "group of people with common occupation" (c. 1500), and "generation" (1540s). Meaning "tribe, nation, or people regarded as of common stock" is by 1560s. Modern meaning of "one of the great divisions of mankind based on physical peculiarities" is from 1774 (though as OED points out, even among anthropologists there never has been an accepted classification of these).Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine. [Dick Gregory, 1964]In mid-20c. U.S. music catalogues, "Negro." Klein suggests these derive from Arabic ra's "head, beginning, origin" (compare Hebrew rosh). Old English þeode meant both "race, folk, nation" and "language;" as a verb, geþeodan, it meant "to unite, to join."

I was by no means trying to talk down on Africans, but my statement stays true regardless of my intentions. Africans did not know what a "race" was until the Europeans arrived and they certainly did not have a racial identity (black), that identity was applied to them by Europeans. Africans were certainly aware of the differences between ethnicities, of the differences between people of different colour, of the difference between different tribal identities and so forth.

I agree very much with the rest of your post, just a thought I wanted to share with you. The way that the "supreme" racial identity works is quite interesting. "White" in and of itself is not a declaration of what you are, but much rather a declaration of what you are not. If we really go by skin colour alone then the Irish should have always been considered white. But they weren't, it took a damn long time until Irish were equal to anglo-saxon protestants. This might have to do with religion, as you already pointed out. Still today white identity is always changing. Honestly, me being someone who observes the "nat soc", "white supremacy" community a lot.. Those people can't even decide for themselves if slavs are white or not. And honestly, I don't think the enlightenment-era anthropologists that came up with this phenotype-oriented bs weren't in agreement either. It very much seems like racism is just a completely arbitrary hierarchy where the "inventors" sit at the top and mold the superior identity to their liking.

Some of the history of racism is very intriguing. Are you familiar with the hamitic hypothesis? Fascinating stuff. I once wrote a paper about how the colonizers projected this dualistic identity upon the Rwandans and how that led to the etnic outrages and, ultimately, the genocide. The hamitic hypothesis is just one small cornerstone that reveals how bonkers "science" was in these days of "enlightenment" ~

 

[Tee Kay]

No one in Europe had even a concept of race until half a century ago.

Surely you mean "millennium" not "century"

 

[innonimatu]

Some of the history of racism is very intriguing. Are you familiar with the hamitic hypothesis? Fascinating stuff. I once wrote a paper about how the colonizers projected this dualistic identity upon the Rwandans and how that led to the etnic outrages and, ultimately, the genocide. The hamitic hypothesis is just one small cornerstone that reveals how bonkers "science" was in these days of "enlightenment" ~

Thanks, I had never heard about that and just had a quick read on it. I can see where it links with the "promotion" of the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Though I also venture that the colonial projects were pragmatically self-serving, first and foremost, and only adopted those ideologies that could be used. And then in turn promoted them. In the 19th century states were not particularly wealthy and both colonial companies and "state-managed" colonies had to make do and turn a profit. That meant organizing the exploitation of the african populations, as we all know, because europeans would not migrate there in large numbers. Colonial governments would do anything that was expedient to extract the maximum of traceable wealth from those populations, with the smaller costs. Infrastructure was limited to ports in the coast or rivers, those were fixed costs for each territory. The variable costs were the military, the cost of repression. This the european colonial governments would go along with whatever structures were already in place and willing to cooperate in that extraction of valuable goods.

Did the belgians and the french actually went to the trouble of installing a group over another, with the military costs necessary for that? Or did they exploit structures that was already in place and nudged them along?