SUNY SERIES, PHILOSOPHY AND RACE REPRODUCTION, Robert Bernasconi and T. Dencan Sharpley-Whiting, editors RACE, AND GENDER IN PHILOSOPHY AND THE EARLY LIFE SCIENCES
Edned by SUSANNE LETTOW
SUNYPRE 5 5
INDIANA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES BLOOMINGTON CONTENTS
Published by Sfar~ Univ~rsity of New York Press. Albany
CD 2014 Srar~ Universiry ofNcwYork Introoucdon SUSANN£ L£1TOW All righu reserved
Printed in the United States of America PART I. REPRODUCTION AND THE EARLY LIFE SCIENCES No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whauocvcr without wrinen pe.rmiuion. No pan of mil book may be stored in a retrieval system I. Genera.ion. Genealogy. and Time: The Concep. of or transmined in any form or by any means induding dccttonic. decttostaric. Reproduction from Histoi" naru,,/k '0 Narurphilosophk magnetic tape. m
Production by Dana Fooce 3. The Scientific Construction of Gender and Generation in the Marketing by Michael Campochlaro German Late Enlightenment and in German Romantic Ubnry ofCongras CauJogjnS·In·P.blicadon D... Naturphilosophie PETER HANNS R£ILL 65 Reproduction. ract. and gender in philosophy and the early life sciences I edited by Susanne l..enow. 4. Zeugungl Fortpftallzung: Distinctions of Medium in the pages cm.-(SUNY series. Philosophy and race) Discourse on Gener.ltion around 1800 Includes bibliognpbical "!".,,nees and index. JOC£LYN HOLLAND 83 ISBN 978·1-4384-4949-4 (aIk. paper) I. Race-Philosophy 2. Human rtproduaion-Philosophy 3. Scs 5. Treviranus' Biology: Genera.ion. Degeneration. and the Philosophy 1. Len:ow. Susanne. editor of compilation. Boundaries of Life HTI521.R4562014 305.800 I -dc23 JOAN ST£IG£RWALD 105 2013005360
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 y vi CONTENTS
PART II. ARnCULAnONS OF RACE AND GENDER
6. Skin Color and the Origin of Physical Anthropology (1640-1850) RENATO G. MAZZOLINI 13 1 7. The Caucosian Slave Race: Beautiful Circassians and the Hybrid Origin of European Identity SARA FICAL 163 8. Analogy of Analogy: Animals and Slaves in Maty Wollstonecraft's Defense of Women's Rights • PENELOPE DEUTSCHER 187 9. Reproducing Difference: Race and Heredity ftom a Iongu' Juri, Perspective STAFFAN MULLER-WILLE 217 10. Heredity and Hybridity in the Nannal Histoty of Kant, Girtonner, and Schelling during the 1790. ROBERT BERNASCONI 237 11. Sexual Polarity in Schelling and Hegel ALISON STONE 259 About the Contributors 283 Index 287 6
SKIN COLOR AND THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (1640-1850)
RENATO G. MAZZOLINI
ince the second half of the nineteenth century. the historiography of Sphysical anthropology has concentrated on idenrifying the chronologi cal sequence of the variously inOucntial studies that gave rise to the systems used to classilY the hum.n races. Derived from this endeavor is an emphasis placed by the bulk of this historiography on the emergence: of the conce:pt of race:. Concomitantly. this notion of race: was arbitrarily extended in works by scholars belonging to historial periods in which the term (or.anyequivalent notion) did not even ai$[. On me orner hand, even the most cautious his roriography-that which has sought to understand the polirical and social implications of racial classifications-has been to some exten, enthealled with the concept of race. both in i
131 I 132 RENATO G. MAZZOUNI SKIN COLOR AND THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 133
five centuries. On the basis of wide-ranging =h conducted over many man as human. Since the sixteenth century this image has grown increasingly years. it is my intention in this chapter to suggest some dements fOr a general resrric((~~d in its range. rethinking of the origin of physical anthropology during Its gestation between h was perhaps because the travelers of the late fifteenth and sixteenth approximately the mid-sixteenth cenrury and the mid-nineteenth cenrury. century did not come across men with dog heads and tails during their However. rethinking this historical phase requires w. first ofall. to consider it long, dangerous. and exhausting journeys that their accounts of these travels not as a "phase" that inevitably produced the racial theories of the nineteenth say Iitde about the physical fearures of the peoples that they met along the century but rather to examine it in relative autonomy and detached from its way and. instead. abound with descriptions of Customs and beliefs. These presumed future_ In other words. when we read the texts of the seventeenth accounts had a forceful impact on the imaginations of those who read them and eighteenth cenruries. which a well-established historiographical tradition in Europe. depicting as they did forms of behavior and belielS at odds with regards as constiruting the foundation of physical anthropology. we mwt set those permined in closely structUred and disciplined European society. They this interpretation aside and instead ask what problems these texts addressed also prompted the first collection of observations that became the stock and sought to explain. We mwt also ask what categories Europeans employed in trade of a new discipline: ethnology. But at that time. they were rathet to classifY non-Europeans befOre the advent in the nineteenth cenrury ofsuch the object of theological and moral reRection. which gave rise to specula notions as TiUt~ racism, civilirAtion. primitivt, monogtnais. polygtnesu, and so tive models of another son of humankind: "man in me state of nature" in on. We mwt enquire. fOr example. as to whether physical otherness was effec the sevemeenth century and the "noble savage" in the eighteenth. The acti tively a cognitive problem in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ques vation of an imaginative capacity now able to conceive a different kind of tions of this kind undermine our relative certainties on the perceptive modes human existence was not a matter of minor importance. It is comparable in of Europeans in that period. and they require a systematic reinterpretation of irs implications and effects on European culture to the great sixtcenth- and the documentation available to w. sc:venteemh.-.century debates on me struclUre of the cosmos. This imagina If we take physical anthropology to be that area ofscientific research that tion, however. closely imerwove with another dimension: the past. Histori concerns itself with human biological diversity. then we mwt concur with cally erudite inquiries conducted by wing the method of historical derivation those who locate the Routishing of the discipline in the second half of the sought to legitimate vested power on genealogical grounds. propounding eighteenth cenrury. when scholars like Buffon (1749) called it the "narural the unlikely descendents of coeval noble houses from Roman or even Tro history of man."' Ifinstead we ask when. in Westetn Europe. human biologi jan families. This gave rise to renewed interest in Greco-Roman civilization, cal diversity became a problem to explain and why it became a problem. we which was proposed as the model ofenduring civil and artistic virtues against find ourselves in great difficulties. because die question has not been sub which the present-the sixteenth and seventeenth cenruri ...... hould mea jected to systematic historical inquiry. Moreover, the belief in the existence sure itself in an ideal endeavor to emulate and surpass it. and of which the of men with the heads of dogs and taiIs. which from Herodorus through qUm!1k tks anamna " tks modema was only one of the many symptoms. Pliny and Pomponiw Mela was still widespread in the Middle Ages and the However. seeking to emulate a beloved and mythiciu:d past also meant emu early modern age. can hardly be taken to be the maner of an alleged physi lating its decadence. Europeans were thus foreseen a fate similar to the one cal anthropology. becawe the difference was not ascertained. It was not the that befell the Greco-Romans. which the millenerianist Christian tradition object of research. nor was it thematized. This is not to imply that the belief viewed as even more likely. and indeed inevitable. Amuety about the future is not of historical significance; only that it cannot be taken to be part of and a desire. almost always unexpressed. fOr endless conservation prompted an explicit anthropology or "narural history of man." The historical impor ror some a comparative concern with the relative features and merits of the tance of the belief resides in the fact that scholars of antiquity and of the various European populations. This generated. on the one hand, a peculiar Middle Ages were ready to recognize beings with the heads of dogs and tails genre of essays on "national characters," which enjoyed great success in the as human beings. Consequendy. although these scholars located these beings eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and. on the other, a new view of at the margins of the explored world. their physical diversity did not over history in which the Christian idea of salvation was secularized into that awe them. and they were willing to accept a more polymorphow image of of progress. 134 RENATO G. MAZZOUNI SKIN COLOR AND THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 135
When Western European scholars realized that the Americas formed a pre-Adamites who had survived the Great Flood, attracted harsh criticism continent unknown to the ancients and separated from the Old World by from both Protestants and Catholics.' It was at",cked because it emphasized interminable expanses of ocean, the fact that it was inhabited by humans the inherent contradictions in the Mosaic revelation (who, in f..ct, were the became an intractable theoretical problem for them. How could human people who tilled the land at the time of Adam, and who was Cain's wife?), beings have reached the Americas? This was the question. It obviously did not and undermined the canonical beliefs that underpinned the Europeans' con concern a physical djfference among humans; but concerned, rather, their ception of the origin of the human species and its distribution around the different location in a space where the Old World was deemed the center. The globe. It reinforced the idea that there might exist a humanity parallel and reason why this constituted a problem was the narrative of the origin of the alien to the one elected by God and the sole object of sacred history and gave human species and its distribution as portrayed in the book of Genesis. This rise to a dichotomous view of humaniry, which was powerful and selective. narrative was considered a revealed trum, and for Christians it constituted a There were the descendants of Noah (the second Adam) on the one hand, binding framework for interpretation of humanity as a whole and therefore and, on the other, everyone else; namely those apparendy excluded from also for the inhabitants of the New World. Numerous theories of migration the restricted paradigm of mankind's origins from Adam and Eve. Although conrended thar a population from the Old World had settled-after travel assailed by the proponents of universal evangelization, this view took deep ing by sea or by land-in the West Indies. The new themes propounded roOt, becoming the covert criterion-especially in everyday life-which justi in numerow works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were those fied exclusion, subjugation, and exploitation on historical grounds.' of larent analogies between the rituals of the Amerindians and those of the The geographical expansion of the Europeans furnished further elements populations of the Old World. But the explanatory paradigm for the spa and suggestions for recasting traditional notions. including those concern rial distribution of mankind was migration and colonization by a population ing me difference between mcn and animals and, in particular. between stemming from the Old World; that is, by predecessors of the same Europe men and monkeys. That the anatomical structure of men and apes displayed ans who were now once again migrating and colonizing. Only by hypothesiz surprising similarities had been well-known since antiquity. Indeed, Galen's ing ancient migrations. in fact, could me presence of a human species on an anatomy-as critically pointed out by Vesalius and the I",lian anatomists of incredibly distant continent be explained. This was a self-projection through the sixteenth century-was much more an anatomy of the ape than of the time, and no European could possibly conceive that the Earth might have human. However, while the an.tomists of the early modem .ge boasted that been populated from the Americas. The notion of migration accounted for rhey had emancipated human anaromy from that of apes, news arrived of the diversity of the places inhabited by man and gave reassurance thar the creatures similar to monkeys whose appearance and behavior closely resem human species was one and one alone. And it is a posrulate mat remains bled human beings. The information on the intellectual abilities of certain today. apes-like the Asiatic "pithecanthrope," which "could be misl2ken for a wild In its chronological distribution, from the first fifteenth-century accounts man" (Gesner 1551); the industrious ape (probably gorilla), which built itself to the studies of the lare seventeenth century, the literature on the Amerindi shelters against the rain (Barrel 1613); the emorions displayed by the female ans displays an evident shift ofinteresr among Europeans from an intellectual orangu",n (de Bondt 1658); the anatomy of a chimpanzee, which had thirty curiosity about their customs and beliefs and also their otigins, to an almost four features in common with other apes and forty-eight with the human exclusive insistence on the laner. It is as if the Amerindians, with their diver species (Tyson I 699)-induced some naturalists to reconsider the similarities sified and mysterious cultures, disappeared from the scen~and their more found berween men and apes and, more generally, man's place in the animal complex political and social structures did indeed effectively disappear-so kingdom.' While Descartes postulated an unbridgeable difference between that what remained was their geographical distribution, which proved so dif humans and animals, whereby the former were endowed with reason and ficult to fit into the ftamework of classical historiography and biblical revela· were therefore spiritual. and the latter were machines entirely devoid of rea tion. Consequendy, the theory propounded by Isaac La Peyrere (1655) of a son, some naturalists were ,0 struck by the parallels between physical features twofold creation (one of all men, the so-ca.lled pre-Adamites, and of Adam, and behavioral parrerns thar they claimed that the intellectual differences the progenitor of the Jewish people alone), whereby the Amerindians were belWecn mcn and apes were noc qualitative. but merely a matter ofdegree and 138 RENATO G. MAZZOLINI SKIN COLOR AND THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 137 that they could be attributed to a different confOrmation of the brain.' From " ------the point of view of wological classification. fOr Linnaeus (J 735). humans " ------should be placed together with apes in the order of"Anthropomorphs"-that I ------is. what were later termed "Primates."" "I ask you," Linnaeus wrote in 1747 ,." ------to one of his cotrespondents. "and the whole world [if there is) a difference of 10 '------genus according to the principles of natural history between man and ape. I - certainly did not know of any."' " I The debate on the relation between humans and apes. man's place in the " I -...... animal kingdom. and his alleged singulariry. grew more intense. It mingled I." II Kim. egen. with other interconnected themes like the notions of"species" and "reproduc 8 I tion," or me reciproc.allinks among organic structure, function, and envi~ • r ronment. The debate thus inRuenced the systems of classification employed 4 I and the Images of nature and man that were the products andlor matrices of I those classifications. The solution of one problem. therefore. en railed changes I nj[e1& or adjustments to contiguous or more general theories. The discussion was • not restricted to specialists like Buffon. Linnaeus. Camper. Blumenbach. Lamarck. and Cuvier alone. but involved a large patt of European culture in Chart 6. 1 an overall rethinking of the order of animate nature. Indeed. the issues. which preoccupied successive generations of naturalists from circa 1749 onward. had an interest of general scope: What was the natural order. and if one existed. noted was not il difference perceived in populations previously unknown to how could it be perceived or conceived? Inevitably. questions of this level them. but a difference perceived-and which therefOre became problematic of importance were inRuenced by the aspirations. projects. experiences. and in populations with which they had been acquainted since time immemorial. reReaions relative to another order-the political and social system-which And yct, numerous seventeenth-century texts show unequivocally the pres in those same years, amid refonns, revolutions, wars and restorations, envis ence of a recurrent question: 'IWhy are the Ethiopians black?" At that time. aged or established new relationships among men. Due to often simultaneous and in the two fOllowing centuries. Ethiopian was the learned term used to correspondences. the two orders of phenomena (I.e .• the natural and politi denote the sub-Saharan Aftican. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. cal-social) overlapped in the minds of even those who sought to keep them the question gave rise to a large number of monographs or specialist articles. distinct. giving rise to a slow but inexorable shift from classificatory criteria. The issue was also addressed in chapters or sections of manuals on anatomy. in which the spatial dimension and the ontology of beings predominated. to physiology. natural history. natural philosophy. general history. theology. and criteria in which the temporal or historicist dimension and the becoming of in travelliterarure. From the second half of the eighteenth century onward. it beings held sway. was a central topic of texts on the natural history of man. Chart 6.1 shows the chronological distribulion. between 1640 and 1849. of the first editions of fOur hundred works that either sought to explain why ·WHY ARE THE ETHIOPIANS BLACK?" the skin color of sub-Saharan Africans was black or used skin color as a crite SKIN COLOR AS A RESEARCH OBJECT rion for the classification of humankind. Although the chart refe .. to research The process just outlined becomes more evident If we consider the debates on still in progress, and is therefore incomplete also because it does not consider black skin in their chronological sequence from the mid-seventeenth to the entries in dictionaries and encyclopedias, it neverthdess demonstrates that the mid-nineteenth century. At /irst sight. it may seem curious that. as the Euro problem of the pigmentation of Afticans was a major and constant subject of peans continued their geographical expansion. the main physical difference inquiry. The chart shows the "peaks" of the debates in the specialist literature 138 RENATO G. MAZZOUNI SKIN COLOR ANO THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 139
(spec.)-which only includes works whose title refers ro black skin-as well in 18 I 8, in which the author developed a theory of natural selection while as the presence of the topic in scientific handbooks (scien.) and more general conducting research to explain the skin color of Africans." works (gen.). As regards anatomical research, it should be pointed out that before the The chart acquires greater significance if we consider that, during the development of the cell theory in the I830s and the use of the microtome to period in question, not a single work whose title referred to the skin color prepare animal rissue for microscopic examination, sldn was analyzed ana of the Chinese or Amerindians was published. There is one exception, but it tomically not with vertical sections but by inspecting layers detached from is easily explained. The controversial book by Cornelius de Pauw, RtchnTha each other by means of boiling or slow maceration. These techniques enabled philosophiqlW sur k Amiricains, contains a chapter entitled "De la peau des Marcello Malpighi to separate the horny and the "mucous· (also termed "tic Americains," but this in fact describes the skin of Africans, not Amerindians!' ular m (e) identifY the melanin granules as the cause of hair color; • (f) develop the theory that the skin was a selective barrier between external environment and internal environment of the me me 2 body; (g) demonstrate. after much speculation. that albinism is a pigmentary disorder common to all humans; o r (h) fOrm u1ate what has to date been the greatest paradox relative ~ lJ 'f r r to the skins of whites and blacks: that a dark skin absorbs heat. which may not be required in a warm climate. while a light skin t1l reRects heat. which might be useful in a cool climate. ------EXPLANATIONS OF BLACKNESS .. The anatomical difference sought between Europeans and Africans thus turned out to be only a difference of coloration in a layer of the epider mis present in all human beings. For many scholars this feature was to be explained by singling OUt its causes. It should be noted that it was almost never asked why the Malpighian layer of Europeans was whitish. It was the norm from which those who were not white deviated. For that matter. Adam Chart 6.2 was generally imagined as white. A5 a consequence. the search fOr the causes of the pigmentation of the sub-Saharan Africans concerned only the latter. The above hiSlogram shows the temporal distribution of works that Numerous causes were considered and discussed. They can be distin offered theological explanations fOr the blackness ofAfiicans and also of those guished between metaphysical (or. theological) causes and physical causes. that denied the validity of these explanations. It shows that the theological The fOrmer were looked fOr in holy scripture. A number of authors argued explanation was more contested (-) than it was assened (+). Nevertheless. that Africans were the descendants of the cursed people of Canaan and that its large number of adversaries, as well as the number of references made [0 their skin was dark because of Noah's curse." Others argued that Africans it. suggests that it was the opinion most widely held by the general public. were the descendants of Cain; that blackness was the mark impressed upon Moreover, the reason why so many naturalists dismissed it was its reliance on Cain and that they were survivors of the Deluge. 17 Neither explanation was a metaphysical (and not a natural) cause. Overall. the histogram shows the backed by any textual evidence. but scholars endeavored to support them decline-- " Then, as today, me majority of physiologists agreed mat me horny layer of ~ l ______the skin is not sensitive and that tactile sensations are aroused by pressure on '8 i ------~l ------me papillary body of me skin (discovered by Malpighi in 1665). However, ,. 1------11--11:!1------ some aumo .. argued mat me pigment present in me mucous layer of Afri ,. +1 ------I--I]-i"I--~------U r 1- cans impeded delicate sensation and consequently hampered me harmonious , • .L___ ------..---111- 1- activity of the mind. William Fredetick Van Amringe, for example, in a bulky 8 '- i - : -. - I!III-fr l' -~- work entirely devoted to the natural history of man, An Investigation of1M 7htories oflht Natural Hislory ofMan, published in New York in 1848, wrote that the structure of the skin, j ~~v.+t ' i_ ; ~;-~~~ [M)ust necessarily modifY me functional power of me nervous sys tem, and merefore affect me quality of impressions upon me brain .. 1--==---1= - in a very high degree. The difference, in mis respect, in me species I, .,. of man, independently of capacity, or form of me skull, is amply ·u 1 ~ ~ ~ t======ill III ~ 81 81 I!! i!l ~ ill $ ~ II ~ sufficient to produce all me differences observable in all me species. .. ~ .. .. ~ a .. .. i!i ~ ! ~ ! @ ~ 5 5 :: ::: ~ 5 !'! ~ ; ~ ~ ~ i It will account for the slrmuous temperament of me Shemites [or white species); me pass;", temperament of me japh.tites [or yellow 0Jart6.3 species); me callous temperament of the Ishmaelites [or red species); and me most hopeless and lowest of all, me slUggish temperament of no change of skin color among me descendants of Africans who had been me Canaanites [or black species): --whose only hope for an amelio transported to different latitudes. Despite me criticisms brought against me rated condition appears to lie in the bondage incident to a "servant meary, when appropriately recast, it enjoyed great success in me second half of servants,"" of me eighteenth century. This was ptincipally because It found such aumoti tative proponents as Montesquieu and Buffon, but it was once again discred The above passage provides an example of me value judgments inscribed ited in the mid-nineteenth century. in most classifications of me human species based on skin color. Contrary Buffon considered me natural history of man to be me history of me to what one might suppose. these classifications were relatively new among human species mrough time, and he argued mat me effects of me cllmate Europeans. In me sixteenm and early seventeenm centuries, me large groups environment could not be ascertained in only a few generations. To give cred of populations distributed around me globe were not labeled as "whites," ibility to his meary, he requested mat much longer time spans should be con "blacks," "reds," or "yellows." The process of abstraction mat combined (a) sidered. This was similar to me request made by me late nineteenm-century me geographical distribution ofa population, (b) its supposed skin color, and evolutionists. who asked for more time for me slow mechanisms of evolution (c) its supposed constirution, was a feature distinctive of me work of certain to become apparent. scholars of the late seventeenm and early eighteenm century, and it was part of a more ambitious endeavor to classifY reality. As fur as mankind was con cerned, mis process took paradigmatic form in me classification drawn up by SKIN COLOR, CLASSIFICATION, AND DIFFERENCE Linnaeus in me tenm edition of his SYSltma natur.. (1758-1759), where me varieties of the human species were classified as: In the course of meir inquiries into me color of Africans, some aumors drew dramatic compatisons of color, mucous layer, temperament, and mind. The Ammcanus. rufus. cholericw, rectUS. core of me connection was what is known today as cut4n((1US snuitivity. Europttus. albus. sanguincus, torosus. 144 RENATO G. MAZZOUN1 SKIN COLOR AND THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 145 AJiaticus. luridus. melancholicus. rigidus. found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of AI"'· niger. phlegmaticus. laxus." Euclid; and in imagination they are dull. tasteless. and anomalous." Each of the four tenns designating human variety. indicates its geographi Neither the astronomical almanacs produced by the mathematical practitio cal disuibution. skin color or complexion. temperament and physique. The ner Benjamin Banneker. a free black who also participated in the survey of the underlying scheme is the ancient quaternaty system that Linnaeus intro FederaJ Territory (now the District of Columbia). nor the many slave narra duced to this area of inquity. and which was used for similar purposes by tives published by blacks during the abolitionist campaigns. ever changed Jef Kant in 1775.10 The notion of speeies of men. varieties of men or races of lerson's opinion that no black could achieve anything intellectually significant men emerged mainly from the combination of skin color with geographical without the help of a white person." disuibution. conceived within me ancient quaternary scheme of the human The focus thus shifted from color to menral faculties and to analysis of constitution. However. the core of this scheme was the black/white polarity. the cranium. But. despite this shift. the main object of inquiry continued to while the skin colors "red"" and "yellow·12 were arbitrary abstractions based be the polarity between Europeans and Africans; hence. comparisons were on selected sources along with the assignment of a typical temperament and made between the brain volume of whites and blacks. or between theit facial physique to each human variety. . angles. The new classifications besides color. based on Pieter Camper's mea From a historical point of view. it should be stressed that the Idea that surement of the facial angle and the shape of the cranium. yielded a different each human variety could somehow be identified by skin color became an image of humanity !Tom those exclusively based on color. While in the latter. integral part of all subsequent classifications of ~e late eighteenth cen~ury humanity could be envisaged as a set of colors which merged into each other and the first half of the nineteenth. like those devised by Blumenbach. Vlrey. without being necessarily arranged in a hierarchical order (as in BuIIOn. Blu Cuvier. Lawrence. Prichard. Bory de Saint-Vincent. and Broc." This should menbach. and Herder). the alignment of human and animal crania accord be emphasized because the idea persisted among speeialis.ts. a1thous? some ing to the increasing order of the facial angle. generated instead a sense of a scholars argued at the end of the eighteenth century that skin color on Its own hierarchical progression in the scale of beings. 27 was not enough to signal the differences among men. In 1787. for inscaRce. while enumerating some of the theories concerning the causes that might produce black skin. Jefferson wrote: SKiN COLOR. SLAVERY. AND THE NOTION OF RACE The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the What. therefore. is the upshot of all this? From a historical point of view. black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the it is that the notion of biological race came chronologically later than clas skin and scarf-skin itselF. whether it p=ds from the colour of the sifications of the human species based on skin color alone. and also that the blood. the colour of the bile. or from that of some other secretion. debates relative to human pigmentation were the first categorization of physi~ the difference is fixed in nature, and is real as ifits seat and cause were cal difference. Color preceded the notion of race. This means. furthermote. better known to us. And is this difference of no imporcance1 Is it not that prejudice against colored peoples was chronologically antecedent to the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the twO races1" the idea that there existed human types or races. for which it provided the constitutive matrix. Any contemporary discussion that seeks to understand Aesthetic and intellectual features were the main criteria by which Jefferson the roots of European racism should concern itself with those early debates. distinguished blacks from whites: because the interpretative models forged by them persisted much longer and Comparing them [blacks] by their faculties of memory. reason. and more pervasively than the notion of race, developing into the macro· models imagination. it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the and stereotypes that still shape our language and behavior. and of which we whites; in reason much inlerior. as I think one could scarcely be are often unaware. 146 RENATO G. MAZZOUNI SKIN COLOR ANO THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 147 I have already pointed out that the first physical difference to become an mose studies were motivated solely by an endeavor to give religious, ratio effective cognitive problem lOr Europeans was the skin color of a population nal. and natural philosophical legitimacy to slavery; otherwise one could not that it had known. at least in the Mediterranean area. since time immemorial. explain the many protesrs against slavery voiced by doctors and naturalists. I have also pointed OUt the obsession with which Europeans studied the skin In 1646. the English doctor Thomas Browne denounced two theories then ofAfricans; I have mentioned their theological and physiological speculations current on the blackness of Africans as "vulgar errors"-what today would be on the origins of blackness. emphasizing that the first classifications of the called prtjuJica-and proposed a chemical explanation. which asserted that varieties of the human species were based on the polarity between white and color was an integral part of nature." The German-Dutch doctor Johannes black. I now briefly discuss some of the motives underlying that interest and Pechlin demonstrated the relativity of the concept of physical beauty and irs the accompanying studies on Africans and-as far as possible--show that inapplicability in science." Moreover. in 1677. Pechlin began to emphasize they make: some sense. that it had been the exploitation of Africans by Europeans. which modified When the scholars of the late seventeenth centuty asked "Why are Ethio ,he Iatter's perception of Africans! The works of Buffon. Camper. and Blu pians black?" they were certainly not immune to collective perceptions of men bach contain passages in which they express sympathy lOr their Ethio Africans. These perceptions had been recast in the early sixteenth centuty pian "brothers" and condemn slavery.'! when. for the first time in the histoty of mankind. the Europeans Introduced In 1765 I.e Cat thought it was sheer madness to consider black skin a system of color-based slavery (or what is generally called racial sfa"",). the punishment of a crime." One of the main resulrs achieved by natural which prolOundly altered their perceptive evaluation of the peoples they sub historians was the definition in the £ncyclopltlk: "NEGRE. f.m. (Hist. Nat.), jugated. Color-prejudice. in fact. either did not exist or was very mild in the homme qui habite dilli!rentes parties de la terre."" No previous French dic Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. and scant traces of it are to be found In tionary had included the word homm< in irs definition of "Negro." It was the Middle Ages and the fifteenth century." It gathered strength. however. narural hiSlory, therefore. tha, showed that the sub-Saharan African was a in the course of the sixteenth century and was one of the consequences of human person and not a commodity. In 1808, after the abolition of d,e slave color-based slavery. ... ade, in his book Antropologia, Thomas Jarrold said of Africans that "their In the mid-seventeenth century. the order that Europeans conferred on persons are no longer merchandise. No longer merchandise!"" and Bory de the colonies ranked the African as a slave. and lOr the majority of Christians. Saint-Vincent. although a polygenist. included in his work of 1825 the most he was certainly a human person. though a descendant of a IOrebea, bound in ferocious critique on slavery that I have IOUJld in a scientific work." In his slavery. From a legal point of view. he was a commodity. and he was defined Su I nm: saggio Ukologico It may be considered-and usually is-the beginning of racist ideology, but bone structure of the skull, the prominence of the jaws, the thickness of the it should also be intetpreted as the outcome of a long cultural and political lips, the Rat bone of the nose, the length of the forearm-Fabricius held that process." blacks lacked "acumen of intellect" because none of them had ever made a In fact, from a chronological point of view, the idea gained ground and true discovery." The absence of reRection, he wrote, is the reason why they imposed itself as the majority view, just as the campaigns for abolition of had never liberated themselves from "the yoke of the whites."" "We annu first the slave trade and then slavery got undet way, but especially a6er the ally lead them," he added, "as a Rock of sheep !Tom the coasts of Guinea to revolts in the Caribbean and the enactment, on the July 8, 1801, of the first the West Indies," where we hold them by the thousands in slavery, and their constitution of St. Domingue. Article 1 of the constitution stated that the frequent revolts against the whites have never been successful." Should the colony was pan of the French empire, but was ruled by "special laws." Article blacks prevail over the French in St. Domingue, this would not depend on 3 established that slavery be abolished forever: "All its inhabitants are bom, their capacity "to programme great plans with precision," but only on their live and die I«e and French." Article 4 specified that any person, whateVer number, the features of the region, the inhospitable climate, diseases, and the "his color," was entitled to apply for all forms of employment, and Article 5 lack of French suppon troops." Deploying the concept of an "intermediate stated that no othet distinction exiSts between men than that of vinues and fenile species" (Mitttlart), Fabricius wrote, "For this reason I consider the talents and that all men are equal before the law, whether they are to be pun black just as my half brother, generated by the cross of the white man and ished or protected." the ape."" The expression "half brother" was an implicit criticism against the The ptinciple of self-government (Art. 1.), the abolition of slavery (Art. English abolitionists' motto, ''Am I not a Man and a Brother?" 3.), the removal of all distinctions among whites, blacks, and mulattos, and therefore of the caste system (Art. 4.), and finally the statement of the principle of equality before the law with the consequent abolition of all the privileges, ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF A EUROPEAN SOMATIC IDENTITY which hitheno had been enjoyed by the planters and suffered by the blacks and the mulanos (Art. 5.), "'present the pillars of the 1801 Constitution of I believe that it is impossible to get at the underlying sense of why Europeans St. Domingue. Never before, and in no other colony, had blacks achieved considered color to be a mark ofinferiority, thereby prodUcing the stereotypes anything similar: the accomplishment of a constitutional order about which that have been transmitted in European culture to the present day, unless one not even the most enlightened European philosophet had ever dared to write. asks the question: Why did the Europeans consider themselves to be superior? However, it was only through powerful structural social changes that such A clue is provided by cerrain definitions of "European" that are found in dic an extraordinary event came about; that is, through con8icts. revolts, rcvo~ tionaries and encyclopedias published during the period in question and in lutions. invasions, wars, and massacres on all sides, which had steeped St. the views of eminent historians of the early nineteenm century. Domingue in blood since July 1790, pitting "royaliSts against Republicans, The entry "European" appears rarely in the dictionaries and encyclope masters against slaves, whites against colored, mulanos against blacks, invad dias of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while "Europe" is ddined ers against invaded."" The revolts in Sf. Domingue caused a stir thtoughout as the third, and then the fourth, pan of the world. The", are no entries on Europe and changed the image that many scholars had of blacks. In his highly the subject in, for example, Calepino (1569), Florio (1659), Howell (1660), successful Ginit du christianisme, published in April 1802, Chateaubriand Richelet (1680-1688), Menagio (1685), Furetiere (1690), the Vocabolario wrote: "Who will now plead the cause of the blacks, afrer the crimes they have deg/i Arcadtmici deUa Crusca (1691), LL dict;onnairr de l'Acadimkfranroist committed?"" The Danish naturalist Johann Christian Fabricius, a pupil of (1694), Phillips (1706), and Richelet (1719). In the Dictionnairr de Trivoux Linnaeus, well known for his srudies of insects and for his reRections on of 1721 an entry 5I'"es: hybridization and professor at the University of Kid (then under Danish rule), published a book in 1804 in which he explicitly mentioned the events l.es Europlans SODt fils de Japher; car l'Europe fut peup"'e apres Ie in St. Domingue. Apan from underlining the physical differences between deluge par les enfans d. ce fils de Noe [... J l.es Europlans sont whites and blacks-the color and structure of skin and hair, the form and les peuples de la terre les plus poli""", les plus civilise7. & les mieux 150 RENATO G. MAZZOUNI SKIN COLOR AND THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 151 F.oites. II. surpassent tous ceux des .uues parties du Monde dans les Europeans, it is said, "are all white," a feature rardy to be found in any previ Sciences & les Arts, & principalement dans ceux qu'on nomme Iibe ous dictionary or encyclopedia." And they are also contrasted with Africans raux, dans Ie commerce, dans la navigation, dans la guerre, dans les and Asians from an aesthetic point of view. verrus militaires & civiles. lis sont plus vaillants, plus prudents, plus The underlying sense, it seems to me, was mat of a European somatic genereux, plus doux, plus sociables, plus humains [... J." identiry, in which whiteness was equated with &eedom and blackness with slavery." But it was a somatic identity mainly constructed on politicUwsocial The entry "Europe" in I.e grand dictionnairt historique, published in 1759 by relationships, and in particular on relationships of dominance and subjuga Louis Moreri, declares that! tion, which generated an ideology I have called /cucomuy." The otherness of the person destined for subjugation and exclusion-then and in the future- Los peuples de I'Europe, par leur adresse & par leur courage, se sont was explained in relation to the complexion of those who arrogated the tight soumis ceux des :lUtres parties du mondci leur esprit parole dans leurs to subjugate and exclude. The claimed superiority of the "white man" was ouvrages, leur sage.ssc dans leur gouvernement, leur force dans la not dictated by nature; it arose From Europeans' evaluations of their own armes, leur conduite dans Ie commerce, & la magnificence dans leurs religion (Christianiry) and military, commercial, and civil domination. Whir. villes. t:Europe surpasse aussl en toutes choses les autres parties du and civilized were terms so closely associated by early nineteenth-century his monde, soit pour ses edifices saints & proF.ones, soit pour Ie genie dif torians, philosophers, and philologists, that they became almost synonymous. ferent des peuples qui I'habitent. Nous pouvons encore ajouter aox The same happened with the terms co14rtd and uncivilized. Not surprisingly, avantages de l'Europe, cdui d'avoir Ie vicaire de J. C. en terre dans la therefore, the inRuential historian !Tom Gottingen, Arnold Heeren, declared personne des papes." that the most difficult phenomenon for a historian to explain was the superi ority of whiles with respect to people of color: The Encyc14pidic (175 I-I 765) also lacks an entry on "European," but includes a short one on "Europe,"'" which states that, although it is the smallest of the Whilst we see the surface of the other continents covered with four parts of the world, it has achieved such a high level of power tha< his nations of different, and almost always of dark color, (and. in so tory has almost nothing to compare with it. The entry "Europeans" in 7h( F.or as this determines the race, of difICrent races.) the inhabitants New and Compler. Am(rican Encyc14p ..dia (1805-1811), however contains a of Europe belong only to one race. It has not, and it never had, any significant novelty: other native inhabitants than white nations. Is the white man distinw guished by greater natural talents? [.. .J And yet we must esteem it EUROPEANS, The Inhabitants of Europe. They are all white; and probable; and how much does this probabiliry Increase in strength, if incomparably more handsome than the Africans, and even than we make inquiries of history? The great superiority which the white most of the Asiatics. The Europeans surpass both in arts and sci nations in all ages and parts of the wotld have possessed, is a matter ences, especially in those called libmt/; in trade, navigation, and in of F.oct, which cannot be done away with by denials. It may be said, military and civil affairsj being at the same time, more prudent. more this was the consequence of external circumstances, which F.ovoured valiant. more generous, more polite, and more sociable than they: them more. But has this always been so? And why has it been so? and though divided into various sects, yet as Christians, they have And, further, why did those darker nations, which rose above the infinitely the advamage over a very large part of mankind. There are savage state, attain only to a degree of culture of their own; a degree few places in Europe where men sell each other for slaves; and none which was passed neither by the Egyptian nor by the Mongolian, where robbery is a profession, as it is In Asia and Africa." neither by the Chinese nor the Hindoo? And among the coloured races, why did the black remain behind the brown and the yellow? It will have been noted that this larter entry is almost a translation of the If these observations cannot but make us inclined to artribuce dlflCr one in the Dictionnairt! de Trtvoux, but with a significant diflCrence. The ences of capacity to the several branches of our race, they do not on 152 RENATO G. MAZZOUNI SKIN COLOR AND THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 153 that account prove an absolute want ofcapacity in our darker fellow Froschoverum, 1551-1558), 1:970. Andrew Battel. "The Strange Adven men [in German BriUUrJ. nor must they be urged as containing the tures ofAndrew Battel [... J," Hak/uytus postumus {. , .], ed. Samuel Pur whole explanation of European superiority." chas. 5 vols. (London: by Stansby, 1625-1626),2:970-985,982. Jacob de Bondt. "Hisroriae naturalis [... J'" in Delndilu utriusqut ,.. natuT711i In 1823. the French Protestant historian. Fran~is Guizat. defined superiority et medica {. . .]. ed. Willem Piso (Amsrelaedarni: apud Ludovicum et as "a living and expanding force" (the myth ofJaphet the expansionist). which Danielem Elu:virios, 1658).50-86,84-85. Edward Tyson. Orang-utan, acted in fulfillment of a mission. which it itself did not know." A few years sive Homo sylvtstris; or, The Anatomy ofa Pygmic Compared with that ofa later. he discovered that this mission was established by Providence: "Euro Monkey. an Ape, and a Man {. . .] (London: Thomas Bennet and Daniel pean civilization ·has entered. if we may so speak. into the plan of Providence; Brown, 1699). See especially Giulio Barsanti. "Storia narurale delle scim it progresses according to the intentjons of God. This is the rational account mie 1600-1800," Nundus 5. no. 2 (1990):99-165. of irs superiority."" The Europeans were a mystery even to themselves! To 5. Richard Bradley. A PhiltJsophical Aceou", of the W&rks of Naturt, {. . .] clarifY the mystery they oriented the sciences to select tools ofanalysis that. by (London: printed for W. Meats. 1721).95. highlighting differences. fostered the growth of a powerful myth in which the 6. Carolus Linnaeus, Sysuma naturlU. siv~ regna tria TUltuTIU IJstnnatiu construction of a biologically superior somatic identity was an integral part. p""posita per c/asses, omints, genmz, 0- spedts {. . .] (Lugduni Batavorum: First color, and later a notion of race, used as a biopolitica1 concept. were the .pud Theodorum Haak, ex typographia Joannis Wilhelmi de Groot. constirutive elements of a mythological identity and of epidermiC differences 1735). On Linneaeus' anthropology. see Gunnar Broberg. "Homo sapi in omers. ens. Linnaeus's Classification of Man," in Linnaros: The Man and His W&rk, ed. Tore Fringsmyr (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1983), 156-194. NOTES 7. Letter from Linnaeus to Johann Georg Gmelin dated February 14. 1747, and published in joannis Georgii Gmelini, Reliquiat quae sup=unt com 1. Georges-louiS leclerc. Comte de Buffon. "Hisroire narurelle de l'homme," merr:ii epistolid cttm CaroItJ Linnaeo, Alberto Halkro, Cuilielmo Stelkro in Histoi,. natu,..lk. glnimk et particulil,., av« fa tkscription du Cabin albinism. see Renaro G. Mazzolinl. "Albinos. Leucozthiopcs. Dondos. apud J.nssonio-Waesbergios, 1724), 1-2; Bernhasd Siegfried A1binus, D. Kakerlakken: sulla storia dell'a1binismo d.1 1609 aI1812," in La ruttura "tk .t caUSIa roloris /Ethiopum ., c"terorum hominum (Lcidae Batavorum: • i/ corpo: Studi in mmtoria di Attilio Zanca. ed. Giuseppe Papagno and apud Theodorum Haak; Amsterdam: apud Jacobum Graal & Henricum Giuseppe Olmi (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki. 2006). 161-204. de Lcth, 1737); Ruysch, Acatkmicarum annotlltionum, 8 vols. (Lcidae: 10. Renato G. Mazzolini. "Las Castas: Interracial Crossing and Social StrUC apud J. & H. Verb<:ek, 1754-1768), Lib. I, table I, figs. I, 2; Lib. III, ture. 1770-1835," in H",dity Produml: At th. Cmssroads ofBiology. Poli table IV, figs. I, 2, 3; Lib. VI, rabies II and III. On the work of the tia. and Cultu". 1500-1870. ed. StalFan Muller-Wille and Hans-Jorg CWo Dutch anatomists, see Rena[Q G. Mazzolini, "Frammt:nti di pdle t: Rheinberger (Cambridge. MA: MIT Press. 2007). 349-373. See also immagini di uomini (1700-1740)," in Natunt-culturll. L'inurprttazion. Staffan Millier-Wille. "Reproducing Difference: Race and Heredity from tkl mondo }isico n.i Usti • n.1k immagini, ed. Giuseppe Olmi, Lucia a longue Juri. Perspective" in this volume. Tongiorgi Tomasi, and Atrilio Zanca (Firenzc: Lco S. Olschki, 2000), 11. William Charles Wells. "An Account of a Female of the White Race of 423-443. Mankind. Part of Whose Skin resembles that of a Negro; with some 15. Claude-Nicolas Lc Cat, Trait, tk Ia coultur tk Ia p.au humain. m glnira£ Obse"",tions on the Causes of the Differences in Colour and Form tk «II< des n .~ .• 156 RENATO G. MAZZOUNI SKIN COLOR AND THE ORIGIN OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 157 19. Carolw Unnaew. SysI.ma 1Ul1u= [. • •J. Editio decima reformata [... J. 1818). 22:422-471; Virey. Histoirt! natu",/k tIu gtnrt! humain. Nouvelle 2 vols. (Holmiae: impensis L. Salvii. 1758-1759). 1:20-22. See also. Sys edition. augment.e et entierement refondue. avec 6gures. 3 vols. (Paris: t.rna IUltura. [. • •J. Edilio duodecima. reformata. 3 vols. in 4 parts (Hol chez Crochard. 1824); Georges Cuvier. u Iign. animal dittrib'" d'apris miae: L Salvii. 176tHl8). 1:28-29; and. Sysl and in Diffir-nt Animals and Vtgttabks; andfiom tht formtr to tht latttr 37. Christoph Meiners. Grundrij dtr G"chich" dtr Menschhtit (Lemgo: (London. printed for C. Dilly. 1799). im Velage der Meycrschen Buclthandlung. 1785); Meiners. "Ueber die 28. Frank M. Snowden. Jr.• Btfo" Color Prrjudiu: 71lt Ancitnt Vim/ofBlacks rechtmassigkeit des Negern-Handels," Gattingisch" historisch" Magazin (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press. 1983); Ldlia Crocco Rugsini, 2 (1788):398-416; Meiners, "Ueber die Natur der Afrikanischen Neger, "II negro buono e iI negro malvagio nel mondo c1assico," in Conosunzt und die davon abhangende Be&cyung. oder Einschlinkung der Schwar .tnuht t mppom di convivmza n.ll'antichita. ed. Mana Sordi (Milano: zen," GDttingisches historisches Magazin 6 (1790):385-456; Meiners. Vita e Pensiero, 1979), 108-135; Benjamin Braude, "Black SkinlWhite "Von den Varietilten und Abanen der Neger." Gottingisch" historisch" Skin in Ancient Greece and me Near East," Micrologus 13 (2005): 11-21; Magazin 6 (I790):625-645; Meiners, "Ueber die Farben, und Schat Gude Suckale-Redlernen. Mauritius: Dtr hd/ig. Mohr I tht Black Saint tierungen verschiedencr Volker," Nroa Gottingjschu histDrischa Magazin Mauriu (Houston: Menil Foundation; Munchen, Zurich. Verlag Schnell 1/4 (1792):611-672. Karl Friedrich Heusinger, "Remarques sur I. sc!crc! & Steiner. 1987); Maaike van der Lug<. "La peau noire dans la science tion du pigment noir, et la formation des pails," Journal complimentairt medievale," Micrologus 13 (2005):439-475. du dictionai" tits scitnces mldicaks 14 (1822):229-241; Meiners, Unt,, 29. Thomas Browne. Psmdodoxia tpitksnua: Or, ElUJuirits into v.ry many suchungtn fib" die anomak Kohkn- und Pigmtn,-Bi!dung in dtm mensch Rtetivtd Tentnts, and commonly Pmum.d Truths (London: printed by T. lichtn Karptr (Eisenach: bey Johann Friedrich Baereche, 1823); Meiners. H. for Edward Dod, 1646),322-338. See also. Renato G. Mazzolini, "A "Noch einige Beitlige zur Lehre von der Absonderung der Pigment im Greater Division of Mankind is Made by me Skinne: Thomas Browne e mierischen Korper," Dtutschl!S Arrhiv for die Physiologie. 8 (1823):37-44; iI colore della pelle dei neri," Micrologus 13 (2005):571-604. Meiners, Grundriss tltr physischtn undpsychischm Anthropologit for AtrZte 30. Pochlin, D. habiru 6- colo" £thiopum, 105-106. und Nichtarzlt(Eiscn.ch: beiJohann Friedrich Baerccke, 1829):70-71. 31. Buffon. "Histoire naturelle de I'homme," 305-530; Pieter (Petrus) 38. Jules-Joseph Virer, "Nq;re," in Nouwau dictionnairr d'histoirr nahJ",Ik, Camper. "Redcvocring over den oorsprong en de kleur der zwanen. 24 vols. (Paris: Otterville, 1803-1804), 15:431-457. Quoted here from Voogclcczen in den Oncleedkonstigen Schouwburg te Groningen. den the Venetian edition, Nouveau dictionnairt d'hiJtoire IUZtuulle 31 vols. 14 van slachtmaand 1764," D. rhapsodist 2 (1772):373-394. (Venise: de I'Imprimerie de Palese, 1804-1808), 15:486-518. "Le n commis?" Fran",is-Augwte [Fran",is-Ren~ de] Chateaubriand. Gini. du Asiatics," may be fuund in the entry "Europe" in vol. 7 (\798).39-40. christianism•• ou B.autl1 ,u fa rr:ligion chritimn. 5 vols. (Paris: Chez Mig 40 of the Encyclopdia; or, a Dictionary ofArtr. Scimca. and Mis,,/Janros neret. 1802).4:189. Littraturr [. . .] (Philaddphia: printed by Thomas Dobson). which lacks 43. "Sch3rfe des Verstandes." Johann Christian Fabricius. &sullat. natur the entry "Europeans." historisch., Vorksungm (Kid: in der neuen academischen Suchhandlung. 53. Nell Irvin Painter. 7h. History 0fWhiu Ptopl. (New York. London: W. W. 1804):2\3. Norcon and Company. 2010). 44. "von dem Joche der Weillen." Fabricius. &sultau. 2\3. 54. Renato G. Mazzolini. "Lcucocrazia 0 dell'identici somatica degli euro 45. "Wir flihren sie jahrlich als eine Heerde Schaa~ von der Kiiste Guinea pei," in ldmtita co/ktti'" Ira M.dio"," .d