The Western Idea of Race : From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment

Renowned scholars Jean-Frédéric Schaub and Silvia Sebastiani provide the first complete history of race and racialization. Returning to the dawn of the Renaissance, they trace the origins of race to a much earlier era than typically acknowledged, then show how markers of “impurity” transformed as Enlightenment thinkers justified colonization.

Two eminent historians offer a groundbreaking study of the origins of race in early modern Western Europe, tracing its development through Enlightenment justifications of global hierarchy and colonization. Race is often thought of as an invention of the eighteenth century. In this ambitious book, the first to provide a complete origin story of race, Jean-Frédéric Schaub and Silvia Sebastiani trouble that notion, tracing the concept of race back to the roots of the Renaissance and following its evolution in succeeding centuries. Crucially, they show how race, racialization, and antisemitism developed alongside—rather than despite—the political and scientific advances of the period. Major Enlightenment thinkers advanced universalism while also taking part in debates about human origins, miscegenation, and the genealogy of race, at once advocating for equality and dividing human beings into rigid hierarchies. Beginning with early modern conceptions of “blood purity” among nobles, Schaub and Sebastiani reveal how supposed impurity developed into an elaborate system of classification that justified notions of racial superiority. Initially, impurity was exemplified by Jewish and Muslim conversos in Iberia; later, impurity became a trait associated with New World populations of mixed Spanish, African, and Indigenous ancestry. Examining the creation of racial markers, Schaub and Sebastiani demonstrate how emerging demarcations and structures of belonging were implemented across empires, often with ambiguity or contradictions. Covering more than three hundred years of transatlantic history and drawing on diverse sources, including scientific papers, artworks, and philosophical treatises, The Western Idea of Race is a revelatory account. It lays bare one of the key foundations of modern social inequality.