Who's Black and Why?
A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race
2023 PROSE Award in European History
“An invaluable historical example of the creation of a scientific conception of race that is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.”
—Washington Post
“Reveals how prestigious natural scientists once sought physical explanations, in vain, for a social identity that continues to carry enormous significance to this day.”
—Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People
“A fascinating, if disturbing, window onto the origins of racism.”
—Publishers Weekly
“To read [these essays] is to witness European intellectuals, in the age of the Atlantic slave trade, struggling, one after another, to justify atrocity.”
—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States
In 1739 Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences announced a contest for the best essay on the sources of “blackness.”…