Who’s Black and Why? : : A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race / / ed. by Andrew S. Curran, Henry Louis Gates Jr.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• HerausgeberIn: Curran, Andrew S.,; Gates Jr., Henry Louis,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.)

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 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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- 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