“An invaluable historical example of the creation of a scientific conception of race that is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.” —Washington Post
“Reveals how prestigious natural scientists once sought physical explanations, in vain, for a social identity that continues to carry enormous significance to this day.” —Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People
“A fascinating, if disturbing, window onto the origins of racism.” —Publishers Weekly
“To read [these essays] 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
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. 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, which nonetheless circulate around a common theme: the search for a scientific understanding of the new concept of race. More important, they provide an indispensable record of the Enlightenment-era thinking that normalized the sale and enslavement of Black human beings.
These never previously published documents survived the centuries tucked away in Bordeaux’s municipal library. Translated into English and accompanied by a detailed introduction and headnotes written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Andrew Curran, each essay included in this volume lays bare the origins of anti-Black racism and colorism in the West.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the author of numerous books and has written extensively on the history of race and anti-Black racism in the Enlightenment. His most recent works include Stony the Road and The Black Church. He is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
Andrew S. Curran is a leading specialist of the Enlightenment era and the author of The Anatomy of Blackness and Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely. He is the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University.
Table of Contents
Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Preface: Who’s Black and Why? Note on the Translations Part I Introduction: The 1741 Contest on the “Degeneration” of Black Skin and Hair 1. Blackness through the Power of God 2. Blackness through the Soul of the Father 3. Blackness through the Maternal Imagination 4. Blackness as a Moral Defect 5. Blackness as a Result of the Torrid Zone 6. Blackness as a Result of Divine Providence 7. Blackness as a Result of Heat and Humidity 8. Blackness as a Reversible Accident 9. Blackness as a Result of Hot Air and Darkened Blood 10. Blackness as a Result of a Darkened Humor 11. Blackness as a Result of Blood Flow 12. Blackness as an Extension of Optical Theory 13. Blackness as a Result of an Original Sickness 14. Blackness Degenerated 15. Blackness Classified 16. Blackness Dissected Part II Introduction: The 1772 Contest on “Preserving” Negroes 1. A Slave Ship Surgeon on the Crossing 2. A Parisian Humanitarian on the Slave Trade 3. Louis Alphonse, Bordeaux Apothecary, on the Crossing Select Chronology of the Representation of Africans and Race Notes Acknowledgments Credits Index
