Intellectual History of Race

The concept of race is one that is a recent invention, linked to the period of time in the 16th through 19th centuries when mass slave labor was considered an economic necessity. Its creation was both a social and intellectual matter: the slave-owners and merchants on one hand, and the philosophers and scientists on the other. These groups of people fed into each other, culminating in social and governmental laws and practices, and schools of thought and publication. However, it was the intellectual side of things that was what allowed Europeans and Americans to justify the systemic enslavement of people, as it bred a school of thought that some types of humans were less than others. Here I have documented publications in the 17th and 18th centuries that were some of the originating causes behind the concept of race and ensuing racism.