The Origins of Racism in the West

By: Miriam Eliav-Feldon (Editor), Benjamin Isaac (Editor), Joseph Ziegler (Editor)

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Hardcover | 6 August 2009

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Hardcover
348 Pages

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22.86 x 15.24 x 2.06

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Is 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.

Industry Reviews

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

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List of illustrations	p. vii
Notes on contributors	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Racism: a rationalization of prejudice in Greece and Rome	p. 32
The invention of Persia in Classical Athens	p. 57
Racism, color symbolism, and color prejudice	p. 88
Early Christian universalism and modern forms of racism	p. 109
Illustrating ethnicity in the Middle Ages	p. 132
Proto-racial thought in medieval science	p. 157
Physiognomy, science, and proto-racism 1200-1500	p. 181
Noble dogs, noble blood: the invention of the concept of race in the late Middle Ages	p. 200
The carnal knowing of a coloured body: sleeping with Arabs and Blacks in the European imagination, 1300-1550	p. 217
Was there race before modernity? The example of 'JewishÆ blood in late medieval Spain	p. 232
Religion and race: Protestant and Catholic discourses on Jewish conversions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries	p. 265
Vagrants or vermin? Attitudes towards-Gypsies in early modern Europe	p. 276
The peopling of the New World: ethnos, race and empire in the early-modern world	p. 292
Demons, stars, and the imagination: the early modern body in the Tropics	p. 313
Index	p. 326
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

The Origins of Racism in the West

At a Glance

Hardcover

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

Other Editions and Formats

Paperback

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