The Origins of Racism in the West
The Origins of Racism in the West
Benjamin Isaac, Tel-Aviv University
Joseph Ziegler, University of Haifa, Israel
$47.99
USDIs 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.
- Pioneering volume on the historical development of racism from the Ancient World to the Enlightenment
- The essays range across the classical, medieval and early modern periods
- Will appeal to scholars of European intellectual history and the history of race and nation in European history
Reviews & endorsements
Review of the hardback: 'The application of potentially anachronistic terms to pre-modern societies is the subject of ongoing debate; and the debate is at its most bloody when considering the interlinked concepts of ethnicity, identity and race. This new edited volume contributes greatly to both sides of the discussion, containing within its covers the full gamut of academic argument from detailed scholarly reasoning and masterful surveys of material to impassioned personal counter-attacks.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review
'… contains informative, well written articles which deserving a wide readership amongst a non-specialist audience.' Chartist
Product details
August 2013Paperback
9781107687264
348 pages
229 × 152 × 18 mm
0.47kg
42 b/w illus.
Available
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Table of Contents
- 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.
