Publisher's Synopsis
The book brings together a formidable array of primary sources to present an exposition of the foundations and proliferation of racism. The author examines the way in which black people came to be enslaved, denigrated, likened to wild animals, and regarded as an inferior, dispensable 'other'. He also questions why philosophers, political theorists and intellectuals, who were supposedly committed to the ideals of the enlightenment, were seduced by settler colonialism to the extent that they closed their eyes to its ravaging effects upon indigenous people.It explores the deployment of race in the work of such respected thinkers as Edward Long, the Evangelicals, Robert Knox and James Hunt. It exposes eugenics and the doctrine of class and racial supremacy, as espoused by men of science such as Francis Galton and Karl Pearson. The virtual extinction of the Tasmanians, one of the most chilling examples of the use of race as an imperial weapon, is the forerunner of what will be a compelling chapter for many readers: the political economy of scientific racism in South Africa.
