THE INVENTION

OF RACES &
RACISM
Prof. Isaline Bergamaschi 1
Globalisation Studies - Session 3
  Reporter: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of
Western Civilization?
 Mr. Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

INTRODUC  Racism: « The exercice of a domination

through discrimination according to a
TION biological attribute (apparent or not), which
determines the characteristics of a group »
(C. Guillaumin, 1972)

2
3
  Race does not exist. Only as social and

STARTIN political reality

 Objective: to write « a history of race »
G  The negroe is a fiction, the monstruous
product of the century-long Atlantic
POINTS plantation

(MICHEL
 Discriminatory practices emerged to
legitimate the colonizers’ presence in the
colony to themselves and the other core
, 2020) powers

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AIMÉ
CESAIRE
•Born in Martinique in 1913
(†2008)
•Poet and French political
leader, deputy and mayor of
Fort-de-France (1945-2001)
•"Le racisme commence avec
la colonisation car il a fallu
légitimer cette entreprise"

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WHAT IS
THE
HISTORY  « Race is a process which started with the
European expansion and the development of

OF RACE the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century,

spread through the colonisation of Africa
and Asia, and is residually found in
MADE democratic, capitalist societies »
 The outcome: a white, global order based on
OF? the authority of the white man

MICHEL’
S THESIS
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  I. The « discovery » of America: not a racial
issue, but…
 II. From Slavery to Race: when the negroe
OUTLIN became the slave (XVI-WXIIIth century)

E
 III. The institutionalisation of race: colonial
conquest in Africa and « scientific » racism
 IV. The end of Race and Racism?

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I. THE « DISCOVERY »
OF AMERICA
NOT A RACIAL ISSUE: CHRISTIANS AND INDIANS

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  « The Idea of LA » (reading: Mignolo)

 C. Columbus, 1492: Autochtonous people

are not belligerent (help Christians to
EARLY survive), can provide gold and land for
plantation crops (forced labour) & be
PERCEPTI evangelised
 Debt must be reimbursed + Mortality of
ONS/ Indians

CONTEXT  Ancient ideas about « Barbarians » &

« non-Christians »

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LA CONTROVERSIA DE
VALLADOLID (1550-51): A DEBATE
ABOUT « JUST WAR »
 Encomiendas (parcels): a Spanish labour system instituted in 1503,
under which a Spanish soldier or colonist was granted a tract of land or
a village together with its Indian inhabitants, in exchange for military
protection an education.
 The Junta: on behalf of the Emperor, 15 theologians + jurists
 Waging war against the Indians to evangelize them more easily?
https://vimeo.com/512013420

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LA CONTROVERSIA DE
VALLADOLID (1550-51) (CASTILLA URBANO, IN
TELLKAMP, A companion to early modern Spanish imperial political and social thought, 2020)

B. de Las Casas J. G. de Sepúlveda

 Bishop of Chiapas
 Experience > theory
Royal chronicler to the
emperor Charles V
 Renounced the encomienda
 Objective: the liberation & Supported by the
evangelization of the Indians. encomenderos

University/theory

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 A DEBATE ABOUT « JUST
WAR »
De las Casas Sepúlveda: 4 arguments

Violence is contrary to Church teaching & counterproductive
4 types of « Barbarians » (4 types): « The third species of barbarians
(…) are like wild beasts that live on the fields without cities, or
houses, without social order [policía], without laws, without rites, or
dealings de iure gentium”.
Indians not in this category, Arabs, Africans & “non-Christians”
No dichotomy civilization/barbarism
Human sacrifice: a lesser evil, not specific, & due to ignorance
 “because of the seriousness of the
crimes of those people, especially
because of idolatry and other sins
committed against nature. Second,
because of the roughness of their minds,
they are by nature slavish and barbaric
people and are forced to serve those of
a more elevated genius such as the
Spaniards. Third, because of faith (…).
Fourth, because of the injuries they
inflict against each other, killing men to
sacrifice them and some to eat them.”
 Indians have less reason & civilization
and are transgressors of a natural law

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»THE DEBATE’S AMBIGUOUS
CONSEQUENCES
 Favorable to Las Casas: the Junta considered that the ‘conquests’ were iniquitous, illicit and
unjust” and should be prohibited; nothing decided on the encomiendas.
 Sepúlveda declared himself the winner: most of the jurists had agreed with him

 A Spanish affair? “Public authorities did not entirely side with Las Casas, but they did
support the proposals that subjected the authority over the conquests to the crown and to a
ruling class that owed them its power over the New World (…) The crown (…) took
advantage of the discussion to strengthen an ideology that supported its primacy over the
Indies.”
> audiencias and viceroyalties, less debate after that
 “No radical change in the policies that regulated discovery and conquest”

 End of “conquest & beginning of colonial reorganization & urban expansion (mines).
Indians gradually became direct tributaries (but not serfs) to the Spanish crown and subject
to civil law like the rest of subjects.
 The encomienda system progressively lost its meaning and political power

 State control also through the mediation of religion with the Inquisition (1569).

 1573 Ordenanzas: The word “conquest” is replaced by “pacification”

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A FILM BY CIRO
GUERRA (2015)  (Do yourselves a favour and watch it!)

(COLOMBIA)

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 II. FROM
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SLAVERY TO
RACE
WHEN THE NEGROE BECAME THE SLAVE & RACISM WAS
NATURALISED
(XVI-XVIIIth century)
FROM
THE
INSTITUTI  Modern Colonialism: « Racist at its core »
(Robert J.C. Young, 2015)
ON OF  Africans used as the energy of a plantation
system at industrial level.
SLAVERY  Dehumanisation: an economic and psychic

TO THE necessity
 Mid-18th century: the end of slavery is
INSTITUTI inevitable, but racism does not end

ON OF > « Scientific » racism

RACE

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WHAT/WHO IS THE SLAVE?
 Diverse situations
 Excluded from Humanity/civitas: « non-parent »
 Specificities of slave trade as of late 18th century:
-SLAVE = AFRICAN. A metonymy (16th century)
-Related to the Westernisation of the world & capitalism
 Circular logic of brutality:

« The colonial state’s (…) insistence on treating the colonised as different

and inferior was one means of justifying their continuing subjugation »
(Steinmetz, 2005)

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THE EUROPEAN
REINVENTION OF SLAVERY
 Slavery: common in all empires since Antiquity, not an issue of skin
colour
Lexicon: Ghana - Mali Empire (1324) - Songhay empire (peak during the
XVth-XVIth c.)
 Reinvented by the Europeans in the Americas as of the late XVIth
century, after they virtually prohibited it from their land
 Change in meaning: from economic rationality to racial prejudice

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EMPIRES IN PRE-COLONIAL
WEST AFRICA

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THE MODERN ATLANTIC
ECONOMY
1470-80s: Portuguese in São Tomé: gold vs slaves for sugar
 Turning point in conquest/capitalism, revolution in the economy

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21
PROF. REDIKER (2007 BOOK)
 https://www.c-span.org/video/?296230-1/slave-trade (24’-37’)
 12-15 million people sent, 10-12 million delivered alive. England:
biggest player
 An institution with rules, a social world
 A founding moment of US history and capitalism

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 SEXISM & THE BLACK
FEMALE SLAVE EXPERIENCE

See, also: Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison. After the American Civil War, Margaret
Garner fled from Kentucky to (free) Ohio in 1856. Fugitive Slave Act (1850)

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 III. ‘SCIENTIFIC’
RACISM:
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SEGREGATION &
THE CONQUEST OF
AFRICA
The institutionnalisation of race & the climax of racism
NEW CONTEXT
 In the U.S.: After the Secession war (1861-5): Segregation (1896) in
Southern States
 Ending slavery became an excuse for colonial expansion

> Settlement colonies

 Migration: solution to over-population and urban uprisings in Europe

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THE NEW FUNCTIONS OF
RACE/RACISM
 Race is the new resource that makes the new system possible
 Liberals (Tocqueville 1839, Blanqui) vs planters
 Proliferation of racial categories to deal with the « dangers » of inter-
racial sex
 Scientific racism: Barbarian imaginary + capitalism + the nation

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THE SHIFT TO THE RACIAL
SCHEME
(« GENEALOGIE DU RACISME » IN DORLIN ELSA LA MATRICE DE LA
RACE, 2009)
Previous regimes of
The matrix of race
justification
 Status or conventions  ‘Temper’/biology
 Religion, morality, customs  Bernier
 Climate (Buffon) produces &  Pauw (1739-99, ND): new
justifies hierarchies. debates about the ‘Indians’
(XVIIth c.)
 Linné (1766): 5 groups
=>  Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
(1776)

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THE MODERN MEANING OF
RACE, « GENEALOGIE DU RACISME » IN DORLIN
ELSA, LA MATRICE DE LA RACE (2009)
 Modern meaning of race takes a century to emerge. The criteria is found
inside human beings/ endogenous, naturalised, a genetic identity
 1684: « Nouvelle division de la Terre par les différentes espèces ou
races d’hommes qui l’habitent », by François Bernier in Journal des
Sçavans
 4 groups:

1. Europe to the Nile + Persia

2. SSA
3. Philippines, China, Turkey
4. Lapland

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« SCIENTIFIC RACISM »
(ROBERT J.C. YOUNG, 2015)
 In the 1750s: « negroe » is not a human, just a slave; He does not appear
in « scientific » books (Diderot’s Encyclopedia).
 1820s: new knowledge and « societies » support the colonial project
 Random and unsubstantiated set of evidence

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FOUNDING FATHERS: THE
ROLE OF SCIENCE
 F. W. Edwards & the Ethnological Society of Paris in 1839: Zoology,
medecine and ethnology, phrenology (skull analysis)
 Scientific discourse about race is an answer to the political question of
abolition and the new conditions for production in the plantation
 Arthur de Gobineau (1853), Charles Darwin (1859): struggle for
life/racial struggle.

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THE 1885 BERLIN CONFERENCE ON THE
CIRCULATION OF THE CONGO RIVER

 4 principles:

- Need to reorganise relations between new nations in Europe. Race &

nation.
- Free circulation of resources on the different markets
-Definition of zones of influence: ‘first come, first serve’

+ Hinterland
- Infinite character, since the negroe keeps distancing themselves from
civilisation
The negroe is depicted as lazy, child – or womanlike, naive, happy,
festive, barbarian, cheater, rebellious, oversexualised…

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RACE AT THE TURN OF THE
XXTH C.
 Some scientists did « transition »: Le Bon (1888), Dreyfus (1899-1906),
Du Bois (1898)
 Racism is popular…
 Crisis in the 1920s: colonial fantasy combined to interior nationalism
merged > fascism
 Crisis in the 1930s: economic significance of colonies, war effort
 ‘Mise en valeur des colonies’
 WWII: about race…

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‘POPULAR’ RACISM

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 IV. THE END OF
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RACE… AND
RACISM?
THE END OF RACE
 UNESCO, 1950
 Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1950):

« Europe is morally, spiritually indefensible… Hitler … applied to Europe

colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively
for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies [= indentured workers] of India,
and the Blacks of Africa »

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THE ONGOING
CONSEQUENCES OF RACISM
 International division of labour and Africa’s ‘under-development’ (see:
Rodney, reading for session 5)
 Race still organises our social relations/ collective memories and
national narratives/ cities in Europe
 Racism, the prison and neoliberalism in the U.S. (Rediker)
 Ordinary racism, discrimination and police brutality

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