Who's Black and Why?: A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race

The eighteenth-century essays published in "Whos Black and Why?" provide a fascinating, if disturbing, window into the origins of racism, revealing European intellectuals' attempts to justify atrocity in the age of the Atlantic slave trade. The essays range from naturalists to physicians, theologians to amateur savants, and circulate around a common theme: the search for a scientific understanding of the new concept of race.

Format: Hardback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 29 April 2022
Publisher: Harvard University Press

“A fascinating, if disturbing, window onto the origins of racism.” — Publishers Weekly

“The eighteenth-century essays published for the first time in Whos Black and Why? contain a world of ideas—theories, inventions, and fantasies—about what blackness is, and what it means. To read them is to witness European intellectuals, in the age of the Atlantic slave trade, struggling, one after another, to justify atrocity.” — Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

The first translation and publication of sixteen submissions to the notorious eighteenth-century Bordeaux essay contest on the cause of black skin—an indispensable chronicle of the rise of scientifically based, anti-Black racism.

In 1739, Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences announced a contest for the best essay on the sources of “blackness.” What is the physical cause of blackness and African hair, and what is the cause of Black degeneration, the contest announcement asked. Sixteen essays, written in French and Latin, were ultimately dispatched from all over Europe. The authors ranged from naturalists to physicians, theologians to amateur savants. Documented on each page are European ideas about who is Black and why.

Looming behind these essays is the fact that some four million Africans had been kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic by the time the contest was announced. The essays themselves represent a broad range of opinions. Some affirm that Africans had fallen from God’s grace; others that blackness had resulted from a brutal climate; still others emphasized the anatomical specificity of Africans. All the submissions nonetheless circulate around a common theme: the search for a scientific understanding of the new concept of race. More important, they provide an indispensable chronicle of the rise of scientifically based, anti-Black racism.

Weight: 634g
Dimension: 167 x 242 x 35 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780674244269