Its Meaning, Beginning, and Progress
Its Meaning, Beginning, and Progress
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Probably a realisation of no single fact is of such crucial significance for an understanding of racial antagonism as that the phenomenon had its rise only in modern times. Our hypothesis is that racial exploitation and race prejudice developed among Europeans with the rise of capitalism, all racial antagonisms can be traced to the policies and attitudes of the leading capitalist people, the white people of Europe and North America.
By way of demonstrating this hypothesis we shall review briefly some well-known historical situations. In tracing the rise of the Anglo-Saxons to their position as the master race of the world we shall omit consideration of the great Eastern civilizations from which Greece took a significant cultural heritage.
Barbarian Invasions:-
The general pattern of barbarian invasions was that of a succession of peoples of increasing cultural inferiority moving into areas of higher culture. Thus, the German nations which invaded the Roman Empire had a smaller capacity for maintaining complex culture than the Romans had when they conquered the Greeks; and probably the Celtic people of Britain had still fewer resources to continue their Roman cultural heritage. In the movement of barbarian peoples from the East and Northern Europe toward the general area of the Mediterranean no nationalistic sentiments stood in the way to limit their amalgamation with the native population.
One aspect of this era of barbarian invasion, the movement of Asiatics into Europe, is of especial significance. The Asiatics were better warriors than rulers. We may say rather conclusively that the white man’s rise to superiority over the colored peoples of the other continents is based pivotally on his superiority as a fighter. This is, however, a rather recent achievement. In the Middle Ages the Asiatics outfought him. The Huns, Sarcens, Moors, Seljuk Turks, Ottoman Turks, Tartars – all went deep into Europe, subjugated and sometimes enslaved white peoples who today are highly race-prejudiced. At any rate, we shall not find racial antagonism among these invaders. The most powerful of them were Moslems, and the economic base and religious sanctions of Islam are opposed to race prejudice. Under Islam – at least in so far as it has not been recently corrupted by capitalist ideals – the criterion of belonging is a cultural one; furthermore, Islam is a proselyting culture.
In the Middle Ages, then, we find no racial antagonism in Europe; in fact, Europeans were, at this time, more isolated and ignorant about foreign peoples and world geography than the Romans and Greeks were.
But gradually, under a commercial and religious impulse, Europe began to awaken and to journey toward strange lands. The First Crusade may be taken as the starting point which finally led to world dominance by Europeans. When after their travels in the last quarter of the thirteenth century the Polos returned from the court of the great Kublai Khan in China to tell Europeans a story of fabulous wealth and luxury, the astonished people could hardly believe what they heard. Yet Marco Polo’s memoirs were a great stimulant to traders. It was not until the discovery of America that the movement assumed a decidedly irreversible trend.
In the first place, the geography of the world was still a mystery, and some of the most fantastic tales about its peoples were believed. Stories of the splendor, luxury, and wisdom of the peoples of the East held all Europe in constant wonderment. No one would have been surprised if some traveller had returned from the heart of Africa to break the news that he had found a black monarch ruling over a kingdom surpassing in grandeur and power any that had then existed in Europe. In short, the white man had no conception of himself as a being capable of developing the superior culture of the world – the concept “white man” had not yet its significant social definition – the Anglo-Saxon, the modern master race, was then not even in the picture.
The next era in the history of race relations commenced with the discovery of America. If we see that race prejudice is an attitudinal instrument of modern human, economic exploitation, the question as to whether race prejudice was found among the primitive peoples of the world will not arise. It would be, for instance, a ridiculous inversion of thought to expect the native peoples of America to have had race prejudice for the white invaders. The socio economic matrix of racial antagonism involved the commercialization of human labour in the West Indies, the East Indies, and in America, the intense competition among Businessmen of different Western European cities for the capitalist exploitation of the resources of this area, the development of nationalism and the consolidation of European resources. Racial antagonism attained full maturity during the latter half of 19th century, when the sun no longer set on British soil and the great nationalistic powers of Europe began to justify their economic designs upon weaker European peoples with subtle theories of racial superiority and masterhood.
When white scholars began their almost desperate search of the ancient archives for good reasons to explain the wonderful cultural accomplishments among the whites, European economic and military world dominance was already an actuality. Most of the discoveries which explain the racial superiority of the tall, long-headed blond may be called Hamite rationalizations; they are drawn from bits of isolated verbalizations or deductions from cultural situations which cannot be identified with those of modern race relations. Probably the most widely accepted of these has been the biblical story of the descendants of Ham as a people cursed forever to do menial work of others.
This is the time when total disregard for the human rights and physical power of the non-Christian peoples of the world, the colored peoples, was officially assumed by the first two great colonizing European nations – Spain and Portugal.
Pope Alexander vi’s bill of demarcation issued under Spanish pressure on May 3, 1493, and its revision by the Treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494), arrived at through diplomatic negotiations between Spain and Portugal, put all the heathen peoples and their resources – that is to say, especially the colored peoples of the world - at the disposal of Spain and Portugal.
This then is the beginning of modern race relations.
Slave Trade was simply a way of recruiting labour for the purpose of exploiting the great natural resources of America. And the Indians and the Negroes were the best workers to be found for the heavy labour in the mines and plantations across the Atlantic.
The Need for a Theory to Justify Slavery
The capitalist spirit, the profit-making motive, among the 16th century Spaniards and Portuguese, was constantly inhibited by the philosophy and purpose of the Roman Catholic Church. A social theory supporting the capitalist drive for the impersonal exploitation of the workers was needed.
The capitalist exploitation of the colored workers, it should be observed, consigns them to employments and treatment that is humanly degrading. In order to justify this treatment the exploiters must argue that the workers are innately degraded and degenerate, consequently they naturally merit their condition. In the West Indies the celebrated priest Las Casas said, “The Indians were represented as lazy, filthy pagans, of bestial morals, no better than dogs, and fit only for slavery, in which state alone there might be some hope of instructing and converting them to Christianity”.
Racism and Slavery Justified by Religious Scholars:-
In 1550, finally, the great capitalist interests produced a champion, Gaines De Sepulveda, Brilliant theologian and debater, who declared that it was lawful to make war against and enslave the Indians:
Because of the gravity of their sins........
Because of the rudeness of their heathen and barbarous natures, which oblige them to serve those of more elevated natures, such as the Spaniards possess.
For the spread of the faith; for their subjection renders its preaching easier and more persuasive etc.
About the Book:: Caste, Class and Race – A Study in Social Dynamics.
Published by Monthly Review Press
62 West 14th Street, New York, N.Y 10011.
33/37 Moreland Street, London, E.C. 4, England.
About the Author: Oliver Cromwell Cox, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology, Lincoln University.
