Sweet-The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought

The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought
Author(s): James H. Sweet

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 143-166
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
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The IberianRoots of American
Racist Thought
James H. Sweet
T HE question why African slavery emerged as the primary form of

exploited labor in the Americas during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries has engaged the attention of scholars for years. Although a
consensus seems to have emergedthat the growth of capitalismplayed a major
role in the establishment and survival of African slavery in the Americas,
heated debate continues over the extent to which racismplayed a part in this
development.The issue of which came first, racismor slavery,is centralto this
debate: some historiansaccept Eric Williams's assertionthat "slaverywas not
born of racism:rather, racism was the consequence of slavery."1Though the
origins debate may at first glance seem artificialor analyticallyunimportant,it
can reveal fundamental truths about the trajectory of racist ideology in
Western culture. Locating the crystallization of racist ideology in Europe
before 1492 shifts the focus of the origins debate from American economic
explanations to European cultural ones. The search for the roots of a racial
ideology might begin in ancient times; this articleexploresonly the immediate
foundationsof racismin modernWestern thought.
Many historians of colonial Latin America insist that racism was not
present in Iberia before 1492. They argue instead that racial stratificationwas
a product of American economic conditions.2 This article contends that
James H. Sweet is a Ph. D. candidate in history at the Graduate School and University
Center of the City University of New York. A version of this article was delivered at the 1995
ERASMUS Conference at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mr. Sweet thanks
his advisor, Colin Palmer, for guidance and support and John Chasteen, Carter Dougherty,
William McKee Evans, Betsy Perry, Teo Ruiz, Stuart Schwartz,Jay Smith, and John Thornton
for their insightful comments and critiques.
1 EricWilliams,Capitalism andSlavery(ChapelHill, I944), 7.
2 For several perspectives on this issue see Herbert S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin
America and the Caribbean(New York, i986); H. Hoetink, Slaveryand Race Relationsin the
Americas:ComparativeNotes on their Nature and Nexus (New York, 1973); C. R. Boxer, Race
Relationsin the PortugueseColonialEmpire,i4i5-i825 (Oxford, i963); and Gilberto Freyre, The
Mastersand the Slaves:A Studyin the Developmentof Brazilian Civilization,trans. Samuel Putnam
(New York, 1946). Of these scholars, only Boxer suggests that race may have been an important
factor in Portuguese-Africanrelations before 1492. He dispels the myth that the Portuguesecon-
sidered Africans their equals by demonstrating Portuguese antipathy toward African religions,
value systems, patterns of behavior, and physical appearances.But he falls short of showing the
development of a racist ideology in Portugal. In the scholarship of Spanish and Portuguese
America, there is no explicit, developed body of work on the origins debate as there is for the
United States. For the clearest enunciation of the origins debate in the U. S. see Alden T.
Vaughan, RootsofAmericanRacism:Essayson the ColonialExperience(New York, 1995).
The Williamand Mary Quarterly,3d Series, Vol. LIV, No. i, JanuaryI997

I44 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
racism and capitalism were not inextricably bound together and that the
racism that came to characterizeAmerican slavery was well established in
cultural and religious attitudes in Spain and Portugal by the fifteenth cen-
tury. Such attitudes were reinforced by European political turbulence and
the decline of the Mediterraneanslave trade. The racist beliefs that Iberians
and others would later refine to a "science"were firmly entrenched before
Christopher Columbus made landfall in the Americas.3 This racial idiom
became more rigid as capitalist imperatives gained strength. While these
views do not entirely contradict Williams's thesis, they move away from
mechanistic economic explanations and attempt to show the evolution of
racist thinking from feudalism to capitalism, from Europe to the Americas.
To use the term race in a fifteenth-centuryIberian context may be prob-
lematic. The social context must be considered when examining the func-
tions of racial identifications. Though the concept of race was not unknown
in the fifteenth century, the words razza in Italian, raza in Castilian, rafa in
Portuguese, and racein French simply referredto a group of plants, animals,
or humans that shared traits through a shared genealogy.4 Not until the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did "scientists" begin using "race"to
legitimize claims of human biological superiorityand inferiority.
Though the pseudoscientific classification of persons based on race in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gave greater legitimacy to racism,
this new science merely reinforced old ideological notions. Some might
argue that medieval and premodernprejudiceswere based on Europeanideas
of civility, religion, or culture. But the imposition on all humanity of a uni-
versal culture and a European conception of man sidesteps the issue of
racism. Early modern Europeans conflated what we now call "culture"with
what we now call "race."Thus, for the early modern period, race and culture
cannot be easily separated.A people's inferior culture implied a biologically
inferior people. Behavioral patterns and lifeways that Europeans viewed as
aberrantwere linked to genetically fixed qualities-especially phenotype and
skin color. Even when these inferior Others adopted European cultural and
religious forms, they could not avoid the stigma of cultural inferiority that
their physical appearance proclaimed. The dialectic between culture and
3 In addition to the pioneering work of Boxer, other scholars have commented on the cul-
tural and religious prejudices of Europeans toward Africans, but none has suggested that the
ideological bases of American-style racism were established in early modern Europe. See, for
example, Frank M. Snowden, Jr., Blacksin Antiquity:Ethiopiansin the Greco-RomanExperience
(Cambridge, Mass., 1970), and BeforeColorPrejudice:TheAncient View of Blacks(Cambridge,
Mass., i983); William McKee Evans, "From the Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea: The
StrangeOdysseyof the 'Sons of Ham,"'AmericanHistoricalReview,85 (i980): 15-43; Ivan
Hannaford, Race: TheHistoryof an Idea in the West(Washington, D.C., i996); A. C. de C. M.
Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmenin Portugal, I44I-I555 (Cambridge,
i982); Russell-Wood, "BeforeColumbus: Portugal'sAfrican Prelude to the Middle Passageand
Contribution to Discourse on Race and Slavery,"in Vera LawrenceHyatt and Rex Nettleford,
eds., Race, Discourse,and the Origin of the Americas:A New World View (Washington, D. C.,
1995), 134-68; and Winthrop D. Jordan, Whiteover Black:AmericanAttitudestowardthe Negro,
i55o-i8i2 (Chapel Hill, i968).
4 Lyle N. McAlister,Spainand Portugalin theNew World:I492-1700 (Minneapolis,i984), 53.

IBERIAN ROOTS OF RACIST THOUGHT I45
phenotype operated in such a way that sub-SaharanAfricans were unable to

escape their inferior status. Skin color, as an insignia of race, remained an
indelible markerof cultural, and thus racial, inferiority.
The concept of race is a useful tool for understandingthe dynamics of
power relationships in the early modern period. Europeans invented them-
selves as whites, Africansas blacks, and, later, Indians as reds. In the resulting
social hierarchy,whites were always superior, and blacks occupied the lowest
rung. Indians and persons of mixed-race descent fell in between. In Iberia,
once the traits of the infidel and the slave became associatedwith blackness,
race became the driving force in the formulation of Spanish and Portuguese
attitudes toward sub-SaharanAfricans.For the purposesof this article, racism
can be understoodas a reductionof the socioculturalto the somatic.
Muslim Antecedents
The racist ideologies of fifteenth-centuryIberia grew out of the develop-

ment of African slavery in the Islamic world as far back as the eighth cen-
tury. From 711 until their expulsion in 1492, Muslims controlled a significant
portion of the Iberian peninsula. At its height, the Muslim world extended
east to China. Wide-ranging Islamic influence had profound effects on the
thinking of Iberians and, in many respects, charted the course of emerging
racialhierarchies.
By the ninth century, Muslims were making distinctions between black
and white slaves. These invidious distinctions are best reflected in the two
Arabicwords for slave. The word 'abd(plural 'abid), the traditionalword for
slave, embodied its legal meaning, but in the popular dialect, Europeanslaves
came to be called mamluks.The white mamnukcommandeda higher price than
the black 'abd because he could bring a substantial Christian ransom or be
exchangedfor a Muslim captive.5The differing treatmentof white and black
slaves reflectedtheir relativeworth. The mamnukwas viewed as an investment
to protect, whereas the 'abd'svalue was based on his labor as an expendable
means of production. Whereverthere was back-breakingwork to be done in
the Arabworld, blackslaveswere made to do it. From ninth-centuryIraqiland
reclamation projects to fourteenth-century Saharan salt and copper mines,
black Africans toiled under the worst conditions.6 White slaves were rarely
assignedto such arduoustasks;they were usuallyhousehold servants.This early
5 Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam (New York, I97I), 63-64; Leon Carl Brown,
"Color in Northern Africa,"in Colorand Race,ed. John Hope Franklin (Boston, i968), 193.
6 For a study of a slave revolt involving thousands of black slaves used in the land reclama-
tion projects of Iraq see Alexandre Popovic, La Re'voltedes esclavesen Iraq au 1iiI/IX sicles
(Paris, 1976). For a report of 30,000 black slaves engaged in agriculturalpursuits in iith-century
Bahrainsee Nassiri Khosrau,SeferNameh, trans. Charles Sefer (Paris, i88i). For a description of
black slaves mining gold and precious stones in the northern Nilotic Sudan from the 9th to the
i4th centuries see Yfisuf Fadl Hasan, The Arabs and the Sudan: From the Seventh to the Early
SixteenthCentury(Edinburgh,i967), 44-58. For black slaves in the salt and copper mines of the
Saharaduring the i4th century see Ibn Battuta, Ibn Battuta in BlackAfrica, ed. and trans. Said
Hamdun and Noel King (London, 1975), 23, 32, 56, 58.

distinction, which identified blacks as subordinateOthers, was not limited to

slaves.Free blackswere also known as 'abid.For the emancipatedslave, 'abdno
longer carriedits legal stigma, but the color distinction was no less pernicious.
Opportunitiesfor free blackswere limited to such lowly occupationsas butch-
ers and bath attendants.Thus even in freedomthe blackAfricanperformedthe
tasks of a social and ethnic inferior. From North Africa to Persia, blackness
equaledslavery('abid) and the degradationthat slaveryimplied.7
Pejorative descriptions made by medieval Muslim travelersand scholars
bring into sharp focus the debasement of blacks. One of the first Muslim
travelersto record his contempt for blacks was Baghdad native Ibn Haukal.
After traveling through Ghana and along the Niger River in the tenth cen-
tury, Haukal wrote: "I have not described the country of the African blacks
and the other peoples of the torrid zone: because naturally loving wisdom,
ingenuity, religion, justice and regulargovernment, how could I notice such
people as these, or magnify them by inserting an account of their countries."8
Black Africa was the antithesis of Haukal's definition of "civilization."
Negative cultural stereotypes were applied to the nations of Africa, thereby
making racialjudgments of individualsincreasinglydifficult to escape.
Iberian Muslims were not immune to these disparagingjudgments. In
the eleventh century, Toledo historian Sd'id al-Andalusi wrote a treatise
describing the status of the sciences and learning among various nations.
Sd'id commendedall countriesbut those of the far north and far south for their
impressivescholarlyachievements,while holding blackAfricansin contempt.
For those peoples . . . who live near and beyond the equinoctal
line to the limit of the inhabited world in the south, the long
presence of the sun at the zenith makes the air hot and the atmos-
phere thin. Because of this their temperaments become hot and
their humors fiery, their color black and their hair woolly. Thus,
they lack self-control and steadiness of mind and are overcome by
fickleness, foolishness, and ignorance. Such are the blacks, who
live at the extremity of the land of Ethiopia, the Nubians, the
Zanj and the like.9
Many of the characteristicsattributed to black Africansas a result of climatic

factors were applied to black slaves in the Muslim world. What is not clear is
whether climate theory preceded and informed black slave stereotypes or the
stereotypes preceded and informed climate theory. In any case, by the time
Sd'idwrote, the two were reinforcingone another.
The remarkablycandid diary of Ibn Battuta, drafted in the fourteenth
century, reflects common thoughts and assumptions regarding the Islamic
peoples of black Africa. When he passed through the Islamic kingdom of
Mali in 1352, Battuta was nearing the end of a lifetime of journeying from
7 Evans, "Fromthe Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea," 29-31.
8 Haukal, quoted in E. W. Bovill, The GoldenTradeof theMoors(New York, 1970), 6i-62.
9 Lewis, Raceand Colorin Islam, 36.

his native Morocco to India, China, Sumatra, and East Africa. On reaching
Walata, Battuta "regretted"his "arrivalin their country because of the bad-
ness of their manners and their despising of the whites." After first refusing
an invitation to attend a gathering hosted by an important official, Battuta
relented but, on tasting the local cuisine, complained, "Was it for this the
black invited us?"Unhappy with their hospitality, Battuta "becamesure then
that there was no good to be expected from them" and decided to return
immediately to Morocco.10Battuta went on to express his likes and dislikes
of the Mali people. Among their good qualities, he cited their peacefulness,
their observation of prayer times, their knowledge of the Qu'ran, and their
lack of interferencewith the propertyof white men. These virtues were over-
shadowed by such heathen customs as female nakedness, practice of tradi-
tional religions, and eating dogs and donkeys.11Battuta was quick to impose
his sense of civilization on black Africans and expressedno sympathy for the
black slaves he saw laboring in the salt and copper mines.12 The common
thread binding Muslim and later Christian racial imagery was as much a
rejection of blackness as it was the outcome of the lighter-skinned ruling
class's desire to protect its position of superiorityby celebratingits civility.13
Such racial and cultural stereotypes were regularly reinforced by the thou-
sands of black slaves who flowed east to Persia and, later, north to Iberia.14
The inescapableconstants were that almost all of these blacks or their ances-
tors had arrivedas slaves and that their blacknesswas an immutable badge of
inferiority.Negative racialstereotypescrystallizedin the minds of whites over
the duration of the trans-Saharanslave trade.As reflected in Arabic linguistic
constructions, religious assumptions, and literary records like Ibn Battuta's
diary, blacks, regardlessof their legal status, were always viewed as morally
and culturallyinferior.The Muslim world expected blacks to be slaves.
Fifteenth-century historian Ibn Khaldun expanded on the concept of
black inferiority and its link to slavery. Khaldun asserted that "the Negro
nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery,because (Negroes) have little that
is (essentially)human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of
dumb animals."15Khaldun's somatic deductions are striking; blacks were
suited to slaverybecause of their animal-like characteristics.As to the habits
of these dumb animals, Khaldun reported that "most of the Negroes of the
first zone [the tropics] dwell in caves and thickets, eat herbs, live in savage
10 Battuta, Ibn Battuta in BlackAfrica,ed. and trans. Hamdun and King, 26-29.
11 Ibid., 42-48.
12 Ibid., 23, 32, 56, 58.
13 David Brion Davis, Slaveryand Human Progress(Oxford, i984), 45.
14 Estimates of the averagenumber of sub-Saharanslaves that flowed from south to north
and west to east along the trans-Saharantrade routes, 700-1500, range from i,ooo to 6,ooo per
year. Admittedly, these approximations are based on spotty literary and commercial records.
Ralph A. Austen estimates that over 4 million slaves were transportedacross the Saharaduring
this period; Austen, "The Trans-SaharanSlave Trade: A Tentative Census," in The Uncommon
Market:Essaysin the EconomicHistoryof the Atlantic Slave Trade,ed. Henry A. Gemery and Jan
S. Hogendorn (New York, I979), 23-76.
15 Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal
(Princeton, i967), 117.

isolation and do not congregate,and eat each other."16In his racialhierarchy,

blacksoccupied the lowest level of the socioculturaland biological order.
The most prevalent explanation for the presumed inferiority of blacks
came from the Old Testament. The story of Ham has functioned to justify
the subjection and degradation of blacks for over a thousand years.17
Interpretationsof the curse of Ham can be found in the BabylonianTalmud,
a collection of Jewish oral traditions that first appearedin the fifth century.
Despite the absence of any characterizationof Canaan'schildren accordingto
color, race, or ethnicity in the biblical version, in Genesis Rabbahthe ethnic
identification of the Sons of Ham had begun to shift toward the peoples of
African descent. Noah says to Ham: "You prevented me from doing that
which is done in the dark [i.e., coitus]; accordingly, your seed will be ugly
and black."The eighth-centuryTanhumaversion gives the story as follows:
as for Ham, because he saw with his eyes the nakedness of his
father, his eyes became red: and because he spoke with his mouth,
his lips became crooked and because he turned his face the hair of
his head and his beard became singed and because he did not
cover his [father's] nakedness, he went naked and his prepuce
became stretched, [all this] because all of God's retributions are
commensurateto a transgression.
Although the passagemakes no referenceto slaveryor blackness,it presents a

number of the negative stereotypes that were later applied to African
slaves-deformed lips, crinkled hair, and elongated penises. Even though
rabbinic interpretationsnever explicitly associatedAfricans with the sons of
Ham, they certainlysuggested future racial imagery.18
Islamic interpretations of Noah's curse varied, but a tenth-century
Persian historian, Tabari, presented a typically racial response. In what is
considered the majorArabic historicalwork of the period, Tabari wrote:
Ham begot all blacks and people with crinkly hair. Yafit [Japheth]
all who have broad faces and small eyes (that is, the Turkic peo-
ples) and Sam [also called "Shem"or "Sem," the mythical ances-
tor of the "Semites"] all who have beautiful faces and beautiful
hair (that is, the Arabs and Persians);Noah put a curse on Ham,
16 Ibid., 59.
17 For a fine exploration of the complexities and contradictions in the evolution of the
myth see Benjamin Braude, "The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and
GeographicalIdentities in the Medieval and EarlyModern Periods,"in this issue.
18 Genesis Rabbah 36 sec. 7 (Theodor-Albeckedition, 341 sec. 5); Tanhuma (Levy-Epstein
edition, Noah I3; 29) For exaggerated versions of the Tanhuma interpretation see Robert
Graves and Raphael Patai, HebrewMyths: The Book of Genesis(Garden City, N. Y., i964), 121,
and Edith R. Sanders, "The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origins and Function in Time
Perspective," JournalofAfricanHistory,io (i969), 521-32. A critiqueof thesefabrications canbe
found in David H. Aaron, "EarlyRabbinic Exegesis on Noah's Son Ham and the So-Called
'HamiticMyth,"'Journalof theAmerican
Academy
ofReligion,63 (1995), 721-59.

according to which the hair of his descendants would not extend

over their ears and they would be enslaved wherever they were
encountered.19
In Muslim cosmology, the sub-SaharanAfrican emerged as the son of Ham,

destined to perpetual servitude. The Hamitic curse provided a justification
for the increasing debasement of sub-SaharanAfricans. Muslim vilification
of blacks was constantly being refined as blackness and slavery came to be
regardedas synonymous.
Muslims came to view slavery as the condition that best suited sub-
SaharanAfricans. It had been an integral part of Islamic society since the
religion's beginnings. Even the Prophet Mohammed was a slaveholder, and
Muslim teaching associated slaverywith nonbelief, making the heathen con-
dition an excuse for enslavement. The black pagans of sub-SaharanAfrica
were the most vulnerable to Muslim conquest and enslavement for several
reasons. First, Islamic law prohibited the enslavement of freeborn Muslims.
Moreover, no Christian or Jew living under the protection of an Islamic gov-
ernment could be legally enslaved. Sources of servile labor had to be found
outside of those countries living peacefully under Islamic rule. Until the late
Middle Ages, captives were taken from north of the Mediterranean and
south of the Sahara.When European political stability and military organi-
zation began to provide a formidable threat to Muslim dominance, after the
eleventh century, the ethnically fragmented nations of Africa were a more
inviting target for human exploitation.20 Blackness quickly became a
metaphor for servitude, and the curse of Ham legitimized the continued sub-
jugation of black Africans.
Over time, Iberian Christians became acquainted with the Muslim sys-
tem of black slavery and adopted the same sets of symbols and myths, with
additional arguments. Not only were blacks not Christians, but they were
the Muslims' servants, the heathen's heathen, doubly cursed by their status
as nonbelievers and by their servile condition. The blackness of the sub-
Saharan Africans contrasted more sharply with white Iberians than it did
with tawny-colored Muslims, who constituted the majority of the Muslim
population in Iberia and North Africa. The invidious perception of differ-
ence, expressed in language that suggested black inferiority, became refined
and sharpenedby Muslims, Jews, and Christiansof Iberian origin.
The eighth century witnessed the first extensive contact between
Europeansand sub-SaharanAfricans in Iberia, as Moors, Arabs, and Berbers
19Abfi-Ga'farMuhammed b. Garir a-Tdbarl, Ta'rihar-rusal wa'l-mulfk, ed. J. De Goeje
(Leiden, i879), 223, quoted in Evans, "Fromthe Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea,"33.
20 By the iith century, the decline in the numbers of Slavic slaves arrivingin Spain might
have precipitated a shift to African slavery. In addition, some scholars suggest that the Saharan
trade in black Africansshifted toward Morocco during this period, thereby significantly increas-
ing the number of sub-SaharanAfricans available for purchase in Muslim Spain. See Olivia
Remie Constable, Tradeand Tradersin Muslim Spain: The CommercialRealignmentof the Iberian
Peninsula,900-i5oo (Cambridge,1994), 206, and Michael Brett, "Ifriqiyaas a Market for Saharan
Trade from the ioth Century to the 12th Century AD," j. AfricanHist., io (i969), 347-64.

entered the peninsula with the invading Muslim armies. Along the
Muslim-Christian border, racial and religious tensions were especially high.
Christians identified Muslims as infidels to be eliminated in the name of
the Christian God. Each side enslaved the other's prisoners of war, includ-
ing women and children. Even though the Muslims ranged in skin color
from white to very dark brown, nearly all were distinguishable from white
Christians by their physical appearance. As anthropologist St. Clair Drake
has pointed out, "skin color . . . became a marker used by the Christians to
identify-and vilify-the Infidel."21
Non-Muslim Responses to Africans
During the period of Muslim domination of Spain and Portugal,

Christians, who already equated color with religious infidelity, were well dis-
posed to adopt the color prejudice of neighboring Muslims.22 The enslave-
ment of black Africa's children was so well established among Andalusia's
Muslim community that, in the thirteenth century, poet Ibn Sahl welcomed
the beginning of spring with the following verse: "Spring has come, with his
whites and his blacks; Two classes, his lords and his slaves."23 How much of
the racist ideology Iberian Christians actually internalized is difficult to
measure. We do know that Latin texts of this early period adopted the
Muslim distinction between light-skinned and dark-skinned slaves, thereby
distinguishing the black as the Other. Light-skinned Muslim slaves were
referred to as sarracenus, and dark-skinned ones were called maurus.24 In
addition to the religious and cultural differences between Christians and
Muslims, Christians now made distinctions based strictly on "race" that
appear with increasing frequency after the beginning of the fourteenth cen-
tury. As early as 1332, documents relating to the sales of slaves show
Christians differentiating white from black Moors.25 Christians left few of
21 Drake, Black Folk Here and There:An Essayin History and Anthropology,vol. 2 (Los
Angeles,1990), 193.
22 For a more favorable view of race relations among Muslims see E. Levi-Provensal,
Histoire de l'EspagneMusulmane,vol. 3 (Paris, 1953), 178. Based on the number of mulattoes in

the "aristocracyand bourgeoisie" of Muslim Spain and North Africa, Levi-Provensal argues
that these areaswere free from color prejudice. He assertsthat the Muslims "must be given this
credit-color prejudice has never existed, no more in the Middle Ages than today." Not only
does Levi-Provensalfail to acknowledge the numerous negative rhetorical characterizationsof
blacks, but he also refusesto see any color prejudicein the fact that the majorityof these mulat-
toes were birthed by black slave mothers who were taken as concubines by Arab men.
23 Ibn Sahl al-Andalusi,Diwan, vol. io (Cairo, 1344/1926), io8, quoted in BernardLewis,
Raceand Slaveryin the Middle East:An HistoricalEnquiry(Oxford, i990), 90.
24 Charles Verlinden, The Beginnings of Modern Colonization: Eleven Essays with an
Introduction,trans. Yvonne Freccero (Ithaca, 1970), 37. Sarracenussometimes referred to all
slaves including blacks; 7th-century Catholic scholar and archbishop of Seville, Isidore, wrote
that maurusmeant black;James E. Brunson and Runoko Rashidi, "The Moors in Antiquity,"
in GoldenAge of the Moor, ed. Ivan Van Sertima (New York, 1992), 27.
25 One document describesthe sale of a "moronegrode colore capelcrespo." Another docu-
ment, also from 1332, describes the sale of a "morobrancode color";Archivo Nacional da Torre
do Tombo, Convento de Almoster, liv. 5, nos. 19, 26. From Jose da Silva Horta, "A imagem do

IBERIAN ROOTS OF RACIST THOUGHT 151
the elaborate treatises that were so prevalent in the highly advanced Islamic
societies, but the scant evidence of the Middle Ages and the parallels in
Iberian rhetoric during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries suggest that the
similarities in the evolution of slavery and the perceptions of black Africans
in Muslim Spain and Christian Spain were great indeed.
Among the splinters of evidence that show antiblack sentiment is a
description by Christian physician Ibn Botlan of the "Art of Making Good
Purchasesof Slaves":
At the markets negresses were much in evidence; the darker the

uglier and the more pointed their teeth. They are not up to much.
They are fickle and careless. Dancing and beating time are
engrained in their nature. They say: were the negro to fall from
heaven to the earth he would beat time in falling. They have the
whitest teeth and this because they have much saliva. Unpleasant
is the smell emitted from their armpits and coarse is their skin.26
For Ibn Botlan, the "engrained. . . nature" of African dancing and beating
time and body odor were clear markersof inferiority. Such assessmentswere
later embracedby Christiansinvolved in the Atlantic slave trade.
Another example of a negative racial assessment deriving from non-
Islamic sources in Iberia is the diary of Benjamin of Tudela. Known as The
Itinerary,Benjamin's diary chronicles his travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa
betweenii69 and 1171. Benjaminwasa Jewfromthe northernIberianregion
of Navarre. The range of interests exhibited in his Itineraryindicates that
Benjamin belonged to a group of AndalusianJews who sought the fusion of
Islamic and Jewish cultural forms. His first language was Arabic, and he no
doubt ranked among the region's intellectual and social elite. Benjamin
worked tirelessly in the Jewish community to help his less fortunate
brethren.27Yet the sympathy Benjamin showed Muslims and Jews did not
extend to blacks. The Itinerary provides a brief but telling glimpse of
Benjamin's thoughts on black Africa. Traveling south from Egypt, Benjamin
described the people and places he visited. The influence of European ideas
of civility is striking:
There is a people among them who, like animals, eat of the herbs
that grow on the banks of the Nile and in the fields. They go
about naked and have not the intelligence of ordinary men. They
cohabit with their sisters and any one they find. When the men of
Africano pelos portugueses antes dos contactos," in 0 Confrontodo Qlhar: 0 encontrodospovos

na epocadas NavegafdesPortuguesas,SdculosXVe XVI (Lisbon, i99i), 66 n. 23.
26 Botlan, "Introduction to the Art of Making Good Purchases of Slaves," quoted in
Adam Mez, The Renaissanceof Islam, trans. Salahuddin Khuda Bukhish and D. S. Margoliouth
(London, 1937), i6i.
27 Michael A. Signer, I983 introduction to Benjamin of Tudela, TheItineraryof Benjamin
of Tudela: Travelsin the Middle Ages, intro. Signer, Marcus Nathan Adler (1907), and A. Asher
(i840), [New York, i983]), 17-i8.

Assuan make a raid into their land, they take with them bread and
wheat, dry grapes and figs, and throw the food to these people,
who run after it. Thus they bring many of them back prisoners,
and sell them in the land of Egypt and in surrounding countries.
And these are the black slaves, the sons of Ham.28
Amid the religious turmoil of twelfth-centuryNavarre,Benjamindemon-

strated an unusual tolerancefor religious and cultural differencesat the same
time he relegatedblackAfricansto the status of animals.Though the religious
justification for slavery is apparent in the reference to Ham, one must also
focus on Benjamin'sassessmentof black culturaland intellectualachievement.
Benjamin matter-of-factlyconcluded that, because black people were cultur-
ally inferior, they were naturallysuited for slavery.The civilized lens through
which Benjaminviewed Africanbehaviorled him to this conclusion.
A fourteenth-century Portuguese spiritual work reflects an assertion of
cultural superiority that was remarkablysimilar to the one advanced by the
Muslim historian Sd'idal-Andalusisome 300 years earlier:
In the deserts of Ethiopia there is a people who live without law

like beasts and they have women without marriageand they are
called Garamantes.And there are others there who curse the sun,
when it rises and when it sets, because it burns the land so
strongly. There are others who live in caves and they eat snakes
and anything else that they are able to swallow, and these are
called Trogloditas.Others walk nude and they do not work and
these are called Grafasantes.29
Though Christians and Muslims regardedone another as infidels, adherents

of both faiths found common ground in their disparagement of black
Africans. The rhetoric of black African subhumanity reflected a set of shared
understandingsby Christiansand Muslims on the Iberianpeninsula.
The intersection of racial, cultural, and religious animus was manifested
most clearly during the medieval period in the writings of the Castilian king
Alfonso X, called "el Sabio." Generallybelieved to have fostered a thirteenth-
century intellectualand spiritualrenaissancein Castile, Alfonso X promoted a
subtle philosophy of racialhostility and xenophobia.30Most of Alfonso's ran-
cor was expressedin religiousimageryby attackson Jews and Muslims, and he
reservedhis strongestantipathyfor the black Moors of Africa.
Among the most popular of Alfonso's many works was his Cantigasde
Santa Maria, a collection of 427 poems extolling the virtues of the Virgin
28 Ibid., 127.
29 Horta, "A imagem do Africano pelos," 48. See also Orto do Esposo,ed. B. Maler, vol. I
(Rio de Janeiro, 1956), 117.
30 For Alfonso's contributions to the culture of Castile see Robert I. Burns, ed., Emperor
of Culture:AlfonsoX the Learnedof Castileand His Thirteenth-Century Renaissance(Philadelphia,
i990), and Joseph F. O'Callaghan, The Learned King: The Reign of Alfonso X of Castile
(Philadelphia,1993).

Mary.31Many of the poems are believed by scholars to have been original

works of el Sabio, with the remainingverses reworkingsby professionalpoets
of popular devotionals circulating throughout Europe. Regardless of their
origin, Alfonso X claimed responsibility for the authorship of all 427 verses
and bore the credit and the burden of their contents.
Though negative racial imagery permeates the cantigas, several examples
stand out for their distinctions between white Muslims and black Muslims.
Perhaps the most salient are Alfonso's descriptions of the Almohads and the
Almoravids. In cantiga 385, Alfonso describes the preparations leading up to
a great battle between Spaniards and Muslims.32 He says that Spanish sailors
were preparing to go to war against two foes, "the Moors of Spain and the
Africans"-two classes of enemy that had to be faced.33 Even though Alfonso
does not explain why he differentiates between the two groups of Muslims (to
Alfonso, all Africans were Muslim), racial factors seemed to have entered into
the picture. Both the Almohads and the Spanish thought the most "savage"
and "barbarous" of the Muslims were the sub-Saharan Almoravids.
Encroaching on territory once occupied by the kingdom of Ghana, these
included soldiers who were phenotypically black. The Almohads were lighter-
skinned Muslims from the Maghreb region of northern Africa and southern
Spain whose frequent contacts with Spanish Christians no doubt framed
Alfonso's more positive assessment. Despite being Muslim infidels, the
Almohads were familiar to Alfonso as people who merited greater standing
than their black co-religionists. This distinction could not have been created
solely by white Christians. The ancestors of the Almohads had asserted superi-
ority over sub-Saharan Africans for many years before the thirteenth century.
The most striking case of racial discrimination in Alfonso's Cantigas is a
story of interracial and interreligious adultery. Cantiga i86 begins by
describing a happily married couple threatened by the husband's jealous
mother.34 One day while the wife is sleeping, the mother-in-law orders her
black Moorish slave to lie beside the wife, then calls her son to witness the
scene. The townspeople find the two victims guilty of adultery and take
them to the town square to be burned at the stake. The wife cries for help
from the Virgin Mary and is miraculously saved; the Moor is allowed to
31 Alfonso X, el Saibio,Cantigasde Santa Maria, 4 vols., ed. Walter Mettmann (Coimbra,

I9 59).
32 "Como Santa Maria do porto
guareqeuun ome dUiapedradamui grande de que nunca
cuidara a guareqer, ca tiinna a tela sedada e tornou-se paralitico, e guareq-o Santa Maria,"
ibid., 3:328-30.
33 "Fez y na marinna pera guardar os creschdosdos mourose ser bastidapera guerrejaros
mourosd'Espanne'e os africdos"(lines 8-II). The battle for power in Muslim Spain and North
Africa was accentuated by a long and bitter ethnic rivalry between Arabs and Berbers.Though
the rivalry peaked prior to Alfonso's time, Arabs and Christians continued to view African
Berbersas uncivilized. One might suggest that race exacerbatedthese tensions, but there is no
evidence for such a claim. For a description of the ethnic hostility among Muslims see David
Wasserstein, The Rise and Fall of the Party-Kings:Politics and Societyin Islamic Spain i007-i086
(Princeton, i985), i8-i9, 32-33, 55-6o, 126-32.
34 "Esta d como Santa Maria guardou h[Lamoller do fogo, que a querian queimar,"
Alfonso X, el Saibio,Cantigasde Santa Maria, ed. Mettmann, 2:215-27.

burn. The content and accompanyingpictures of cantiga i86 suggest that the
Moor was punished in such a painful manner because of his color. He is
"blackas pitch," and the pictorial panels show a very dark person with teeth
resembling those of a wild animal.35 While it should be stressed that
Muslims and Jews generally are treated with scorn throughout the cantigas,
the persons with the darkest skins are consistently portrayed as posing the
gravestdanger to Christian purity and receive more severe punishments than
those meted out to other infidels. If these representations do not signify
racism, they manifest a well-entrenched Christian aversionto blackness.
The strength of Iberian Christians' distaste for blacks appearsespecially
in their ideas about the underworld. The demons of hell were black, and
Christians must have recognized the parallels to the literary portrayals of
black Africanson earth. Both were evil, savagecreatureswho representedsin.
The association of blackness with sin was a frequent theme in religious
works. In the medieval manuscript Visdo de Tuindalo, the inhabitants of
Satan's realm are characterizedin the following manner:
those demons were black like coal and their eyes were like oil
lamps, and their teeth were white like snow and they had tails,
like scorpions, and the nails of their feet and hands were made of
sharp steel and . . . thus they threatened the soul, moving against
others with the instruments they had, they tortured the other
souls that went into the inferno.36
Another Christian treatise that marginalizes blacks was written by an

anonymous Franciscan friar. Believed to have been written in the middle of
the fourteenth century, the book generally describes people, places, and
forms of government. Though the author does not directly criticize blacks,
he leaves no doubts as to his belief that they were different from other
Christians. In describing the African peoples of Dongola, the friar says that
they come from a "country well peopled with Christians from Nubia, but
they are negroes."37 Despite the Nubians' embrace of Christianity, the friar
chose to qualify his theological endorsement by noting their blackness. To
him, black Christians were contemptible on racial grounds alone. He goes
on to reveal his thoughts on black intellectual abilities:
Preste Juan [Prester John] . . . rules over very great lands and
many cities of Christians. But they are negroes as to their skins
and burn the sign of the cross with fire in recognition of baptism.
35 "Negrocomepez" (line 63).

36 Two Portuguese versions of the text have survived-one from the end of the i4th cen-
tury and the other from the beginning of the I5th; "Visdo de Tindalo," quoted in Horta, "A
imagem do Africano pelos," 46. See also F. M. Esteves Pereira,RevistaLusitana,3 (i895), 110.
37 Bookof the Knowledgeof all the Kingdoms,Lands,and Lordshipsthat are in the World,and
the Armsand Devicesof eachLand and Lordship,or of the Kingsand Lordswho Possessthem,trans.
and ed. Clements Robert Markham (London, 1912), 32.

-But although these men are negroes, they are still men of intelli-
gence with good brains, and they have understanding and knowl-
edge.38
On the surface, the friar's words may seem complimentary, but his compul-
sion to explain that these blacks have "good brains" indicates a presumption
of black intellectual deficiency. For this particular Franciscan friar, blackness
had negative connotations that took primacy over matters of faith.
The Decline of the Mediterranean Slave Trade
While Christian Iberia inherited and embraced many of the negative

Muslim perceptions regarding the capacities of black Africans, other factors
also contributed to the growth of the African slave trade to Iberia in the sec-
ond half of the fifteenth century. Political shifts in Europe and Asia had dic-
tated the early Iberian slave trade in large part. When the Christian
conquests came to an end in the I260s, so too did much of the supply of
Muslim slaves captured as prisoners of war along the frontier zones. Because
Portugal and Castile were not integral parts of the Mediterranean trade until
the fifteenth century, white slaves were not available in the same numbers as
in the northern kingdom of Aragon.39 Though some Caucasian slaves from
Russia and the Black Sea were purchased through trade with Aragon, Castile
obtained most of its servant population by raiding Muslim-occupied terri-
tory to its south. These raids along the Muslim frontier provided nearly all
of Castile's slaves during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Even
though a number of these Muslim captives were of sub-Saharan descent, it
was not until the middle of the fifteenth century that a significant black
slave population emerged.
The trade in Caucasian slaves from the east was curtailed when the only
remaining bastion of Christian control over the Black Sea fell to the
Ottoman Turks at Constantinople in I453 and Ivan the Great rose to power
in Russia in I462. The Turks restricted the sale of light-skinned Muslims to
western traders on religious grounds, and the emergence of a strong leader in
Russia ultimately translated into state protection from slave raids.40 Political
developments combined with religious, cultural, and racial imperatives to
propel the Castilian shift to black slaves. Though blackness had long been a
reliable indicator of servitude, most of Castile's slaves were Muslim and
Caucasian. After the I460s, the institution of slavery would be considered
the preserve of black Africans. Where blackness always had implied slavery
in Castile, slavery now implied blackness.
The Portuguese were forced to adopt a somewhat different strategy in
their acquisition of slave labor. They were the most isolated from the
38 Ibid., 36.
39 Verlinden, L'esclavagedans I'EuropeMMIievaleINninsuleIbe'rique-France,vol. i (Bruges,
1955), 546-48.
40 Evans, "Fromthe Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea," 37-38.

Mediterraneantrade routes of any of the Iberian kingdoms. As a result, they

were even more reliant on prisoners of war as sources of slave labor. By the
middle of the thirteenth century, the Portuguese Reconquest was completed
with the absorption of the Algarveinto the southern part of the country, and
Portugal no longer shared a border with its Muslim enemies. Thus, other
than the occasional foray across Castilian territory into Granada or into
North Africa to purchaseor abduct Muslims, the Portuguesewere unable to
secure a steady supply of slaves. Searching for new sources as early as I3I7,
King Diniz granted command of the kingdom's maritime fleet to the Italian
slaver Manuel Pesagno, a Genoese captain licensed to course the Moroccan
coast and entitled to one-fifth of all persons captured.41 Technological
advances in navigation and ship construction allowed the Portuguese to sail
their own vessels in the seizure of Ceuta in I415, giving them a foothold on
the North African coast, but after a humiliating defeat at the hands of the
Muslims at Algiers in I437, the supply of Muslim captives again came to a
virtual halt. In the Canary Islands, both Castilians and Portuguesecompeted
in the hunt for Guanche slaves but found too few to sate the thirst for cap-
tive laborers.42
Before the mid-fifteenth century, the Portugueseshowed no clear prefer-
ence for either white or black slaves. The majority of Portuguese slaves were
tawny brown, reflecting Arab, African, and European genetic strains in
Muslim North Africa. But the subordination of blacks due to racial and cul-
tural factors had long been a feature of Portugueselife. In Portuguesethink-
ing, blacks were suited for slavery. Muslim racist expressionscombined with
inadequate supplies of servile labor to make sub-SaharanAfricans the choice
for Portugueseworkers.
In I44I, after a series of exploratory missions down the West African
coast sponsored by the Portuguese crown, Antdo Gonqalves and Nuno
Tristdo met near the coast of Mauritaniaand determined that they must not
return home without a profitable cargo. Landing near Cape Blanc, their men
captured ten Idzdgen and, by chance, one of the Idzagen's black slave
women. Four Idzdgen were killed in the raid. The Portuguese royal chroni-
cler, Gomes Eanes de Zurara,described the people as "barbarousand bestial
. . . cunning."43Although only one black was captured in this raid, she was
the first in a long line of black slaves brought to Portugal.
The Portuguesecontinued intermittent raids on the Idzdgenbut increas-
ingly turned to organized trade. In I443, a Portuguese ship returned to the
African coast and ransomed two Idzdgen noblemen for ten black slaves and a
41 Verlinden, L'esclavagedans l'EuropeMediivale, 548-59, 589, 593.

42 For a discussion of the beginnings of the Portuguese slave trade from Africa and the
CanaryIslands see MagalhaesGodinho, Os Descobrimentos e a economiamundial,vol. 4 (Lisbon,
i98i), i6i, William D. Phillips, Jr., Slaveryfrom Roman Timesto the Early TransatlanticTrade
(Minneapolis,
i985), 107-13, andRussell-Wood,
"BeforeColumbus,"
134-68.
43 Zurara, Conquestsand Discoveriesof Henry the Navigator,trans. BernardMiall (London,
1936), I49. The Idzigen (singular Azenfig) were a dark-skinned Berber people. For more on
them see Russell-Wood, "Before Columbus," 140, and Saunders, Social History of Black Slaves
and Freedmenin Portugal,i8i n. 3.

small amount of gold. This trade demonstratedthe lack of economic value of

sub-SaharanAfricansvis-a-vis the Muslim Idzdgen. It also suggested that the
Portuguese were willing to enslave a relatively unknown religious and cul-
tural group. The moral defense the Portuguese offered for their enslavement
of black Africans was illogical and contradictory, but the characterof their
explanations provides enormous insight into the fifteenth-century
Portugueseworldview.
The Justfication of Slavery
When the first black slaves to arrive directly by sea from Africa landed
on Portuguese soil in the I440s, the Portuguese were placed in the unusual
position of having to justify the enslavement of these pagan captives. Earlier,
any Muslims the Portugueseseized were subject to bondage. The war against
Islam was a holy war. Hence, moral justification for enslavementwas unnec-
essary. All persons captured in "just wars" were consigned to servitude.
While Portuguese intellectuals agreed that "right authority" existed to con-
duct war against those nations that impeded the spread of Catholicism, they
treated the African case differently. Despite Africans' submission to
Portuguese missionary efforts, the Portuguese still considered the capture
and subsequent enslavement of Africans as part of a just war to convert hea-
thens. Africans' willingness to accept the Christian faith had no bearing on
the Portuguese decision to seize them as human property. Papal approval
reinforcedthis contradiction.44
Severalpapal bulls issued between I452 and I456 confirmed the justice of
enslaving black Africans. Nicholas V's Dum diversas(I452) granted to King
Don Alfonso V the authority to subjugate Saracens, pagans, and all other
enemies of Christianity. Don Alfonso was permitted to claim all lands and
property for Portugal in the name of God, and the inhabitants of the pagan
lands were subject to perpetual servitude. Pope Nicholas V extended
Portugal'ssphere of influence to include all territory from Morocco to "the
Indies" with Romanuspontifex (I455). Calixtus III's bull, Inter caetera(I456),
expanded Portugal's role to include spiritual jurisdiction over its conquered
lands.45 Papal endorsement represented, in effect, divine approval for the
conquest and enslavement of sub-SaharanAfricans as a mission for Christ.
The popes thus blessed the sentiment expressedby Prince Henry in I444 on
the arrivalof 235 sub-Saharanslaves at the Algarve port city Lagos: he "had
no other pleasure than in thinking that these lost souls would now be
saved."46Slaverywas a small price for the African to pay for his christianiza-
tion. Spanish conquerors echoed the Portuguese in their justification for
44 As early as the i4th century, the FranciscanAlvaro Pais, an assistantto Pope John XXII,
wrote extensively on the theory of the just war in Portugal. See Russell-Wood, "Before
Columbus," 15i, and "IberianExpansion and the Issue of Black Slavery:Changing Portuguese
Attitudes, 1440-1770," AHR, 83 (1978), 23-28.
45 Russell-Wood, "IberianExpansion and the Issue of Black Slavery,"27-28.
46 Zurara, Conquests and Discoveriesof Henrythe Navigator,trans. Miall, 171.

enslaving African heathens. During the conquests of the Canary Islands from
I478 to I496, Canarians accepted Christianity and renounced claims to sov-
ereignty-yet the Canarians were still regarded as pagans and made slaves.
As Felipe Fernaindez-Armesto has pointed out, precisely because they were
pagans, "the natives were by nature or divine will subjects of the Castilian
crown."47 The Catholic Church endorsed the extension of political power to
those countries that conquered in the name of God. Religious acceptance
meant political surrender for non-Christian nations. Despite acquiescing to
the political and religious demands of the Iberians, people of color contin-
ued to be identified as "pagans" and "heathens," and they were therefore
conscripted to fill the demand for slaves.
In asserting a religious justification for slavery, the Portuguese and the
Spanish avoided subjecting the practice to debate. That very few people
grappled with the moral issue leads to several sobering conclusions about the
evolution of black slavery. The Catholic Church either turned a blind eye
toward Spanish and Portuguese enslavement of converted Africans, or it
embraced a belief in the natural inferiority of peoples of color. A great deal
of evidence points to the latter. Representatives of the church not only
invoked the Hamitic curse when attempting to justify African slavery, but
they also recognized that their Muslim enemies treated blacks as inferior
Others. Therefore, blacks were viewed as inferior to the Muslim infidel and
were accorded very few Christian rights by the Catholic Church.
In practice, the church tolerated the enslavement of blacks regardless of
their religious beliefs, and neither the church nor the Catholic rulers were
concerned with ensuring that Africans received the sacraments. Despite some
success in converting the Kongolese royal court in the I490s, no active steps
were taken to ensure that slaves were baptized until 154.48 In addition, the
bodies of dead African slaves were discarded without Christian burial. In
47 The crown eventually had to intervene on behalf of enslaved Canarianswho had con-
verted to Christianity, ordering their emancipation; Fernindez-Armesto, Before Columbus:
Explorationand Colonizationfrom the Mediterraneanto the Atlantic, 1229-1492 (Philadelphia,
i987), 214, 237-38.
Saunders, Social Historyof Black Slavesand Freedmenin Portugal,40, iio. For the con-
48
version of the Kongolese see John Thornton, Africa and Africansin the Making of the Atlantic
World,1440-i680 (Cambridge, 1992), 257-62, and Wyatt MacGaffey, "Dialogues of the Deaf:
Europeans on the Atlantic Coast of Africa," in Implicit Understandings:Observing,Reporting,
and Reflectingon the EncountersbetweenEuropeansand OtherPeoplesin the EarlyModernEra, ed.
Stuart B. Schwartz (New York, 1994), 249-67. The conversion of the Kongolese court was lim-
ited in scope and was as much the result of political expediency as of religious transformation.
The Portuguesewere aiming to force the Africans to adopt religious and political changes that
would suit Portuguese trading interests. Only the Kongolese elites were converted, and they
refused to give up certain heathen customs like polygyny, thus continuing to be viewed by the
Portuguese as infidels. Thornton stresses that, as a result of missionary efforts, African slaves
were familiar with Christianity before they were transported to Europe and the Americas,
thereby predisposing them to conversion. See Thornton, "On the Trail of Voodoo: African
Christianity in Africa and the Americas," TheAmericas, 44 (i988), 261-78. While this knowl-
edge of Christianity may have played a role in the conversion process in the Americas, during
the earlyyears of the slave trade to Portugal, slaveownersappearto have been unconcernedwith
converting their chattels.

1515, King Manuel I commented on the growing number of dead Africans

found in the streets of Lisbon. He seemed more concerned with sanitation
than with Christian duty:
We are informed that the slaves that die in this city, brought from
Guinea, like others, are not buried as well as they should be in the
places they are thrown, and they are thrown on the ground in
such a manner that they are discovered . .. and eaten by dogs; and
a large number of these slaves are thrown in the dung heap . .. and
still others in the fields of farms.49
To remedy this mounting problem, Manuel suggested that mass burial sites
be constructed where lime could be thrown on the corpses to speed decompo-
sition. Thus, despite papal endorsement and a policy of conversion, the
Catholic Church neglected the spiritual well-being of the Africans.
Christianization of blacks was merely a convenient excuse for enslaving them.
By the fifteenth century, many Iberian Christians had internalized the
racist attitudes of the Muslims and were applying them to the increasing
flow of African slaves to their part of the world. The most compelling illus-
tration appears in the chronicles of Zurara. When the Portuguese captured
the North African city of Ceuta in 1415, they found "among those Moors ...
one large one with burned hair. . . . That Moor was dreadful and he had a
body as black as a raven and he had very large white teeth, and his lips were
very thick and revolting."50 That Zurara singled out one black Moor from
the hundreds of Muslims who took part in the Battle of Ceuta is not partic-
ularly surprising. What is notable is the manner in which he describes this
Moor. The "dreadful" animal characteristics of the Moor rendered him the
ugliest and most fearful of all the Muslims of Africa.
Zurara described the first eleven sub-Saharan blacks brought to Portugal
by Gonqalves as slaves "in accordance with ancient custom, which I believe
to have been because of the curse which after the Deluge, Noah laid on his
son Cain [Canaan] cursing him in this way: that his race would be subject to
all the other races of the world."51 The sons of Canaan had now become a
race. As early as I44I, these distinctions were crystallized in the minds of
Iberia's Christians.
Iberians characterized the first Africans they encountered in pejoratives.
Not only were blacks viewed as a race doomed to servility, but they were also
classed as savages and idolaters. The chronicler Duarte Pacheco Pereira
likened the physical appearance of several African peoples to that of dogs.
They even acted like dogs. Rendering Africans as subhuman explained their
cultural inferiority.52 Alvise da Cadamosto, a Venetian merchant-trader in
49 Victor Ribeiro, A Santa Casada Misericdrdiade Lisboa(Lisbon, 1902), i82-83.

50 Zurara, Crdnicada Tomadade Ceutapor El Rei D. Jodo I, ed. F. M. Esteves Pereira
(Coimbra,Port.,1915), 204.
51 Zurara,Chroniquede Guine'e(Ifan-Dakar,i960), 93-94.
52 Pereira, Esmeraldode Situ Orbis,ed. and trans. George H. T. Kimble (London, I937),

i6o WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
the hire of the Portuguese, described the blacks of Senegal as "greatliars and
cheats."53 The men and women of Budomel (fifty miles inland on the
Senegal River) were "exceedinglylascivious";"they eat on the ground, like
animals, without manners."54Hernando del Pulgar, appointed national his-
toriographerof Spain in I482 by Queen Isabella, wrote that Mina (on the
coast of present-day Ghana) was a land of "savagepeople, black men, who
were naked and lived in huts."55 In assessing the worldview of fifteenth-
century Iberian Christians, the scholar of early Portuguese exploration
Charles R. Boxer comments broadly that "hatred and intolerance . . . for
alien creeds and raceswas the general rule; and the ecumenical spirit . .. was
conspicuous by its absence."56
The Beginnings of the African Slave Trade
Lanqarotede Freitas'sdelivery of 235 Idzdgenand "blackamoor"57 slaves

from Guinea in I444 was the first large cargo of black slaves to arrive on
Portuguesesoil. Zuraracommented at length on the condition of the human
cargoes.As the slaves disembarked,
it was truly a thing astonishing to behold; for among them were

some wellnigh white, who were handsome and well made in body;
others were black as Ethiopians, and so uncomely, as well as
countenance as in body that those who were guarding them
thought they beheld the creatures of the lower hemisphere. ...
Some held their heads bowed down and their faces were bathed
with tears; others were groaning grievously, lifting their eyes to
the heavens, fixing them upon the heights, and raising an outcry
as though imploring the Fatherof Nature to succour them.58
Though Zurara was troubled by what he saw, he was quick to juxtapose

white beauty with black repulsiveness.His comments strongly suggest that a
racial hierarchy determined his judgments. The concept of blood purity
(limpieza de sangre) based on skin color appears to have been as strong a
social and cultural indicator in Iberia as it later became in the Americas.59
89, 98. Pereira also called blacks "evil," "savage,"and "idolatrous";ibid., 93, 96-98, 107, ii6,
127. Finally, he wrote that "it remains to know if they are . . . descended from Adam"; ibid.,
136.
53 Cadamosto, The Voyagesof Cadamostoand OtherDocuments... , trans. and ed. G. R.
Crone (London, 1937), 33.
54 Ibid., 38, 41.
55 Pulgar, "A Castilian Account of the Discovery of Mina, c. 1472," in John William
Blake, trans. and ed., Europeansin WestAfrica1450-i560, 2 vols. (London, 1942), 1:205.
56 Boxer,ThePortuguese
Seaborne
Empire,i4i5-i825 (NewYork,i969), 3.
Leslie B. Rout, Jr., The African Experiencein SpanishAmerica,1502 to the PresentDay
57
(New York, 1976), io.
58 Zurara, Conquests and Discoveriesof Henrythe Navigator,trans. Miall, i69-70.
59 In the Iberian context, limpiezade sangrewas most commonly used in a religious sense.

IBERIAN ROOTS OF RACIST THOUGHT i6i
Whiteness was associated with beauty and civility, while blackness equaled
ugliness and servility.
By this time, blackness and the term negro "signified misfortune and
sadness"in Iberian thought.60 Zurara attributed black inferiority to pagan-
ism and bestiality:
having left the country in which they were dwelling to the perdi-
tion of their souls and bodies, they had now all things to the con-
trary. I say perdition of their souls, because they were pagans
without the light or flame of the holy faith; and of their bodies,
because they lived like beasts, without any of the customs of ratio-
nal creatures,since they did not even know what were bread and
wine, nor garmentsof cloth, nor life in the shelter of a house; and
worse still was their ignorance,which deprivedthem of knowledge
of good, and permittedthem only a life of brutishidleness.61
Zuraraemployed a European measureof morality and civility, declaring that

the West Africans "lived like beasts" in part because of their blackness.
Equating the black body with bestiality necessarily implies condemnation.
Zurara'sextended definition of the beast provides enormous insight into the
cultural value judgments Iberians applied to black Africans. According to
Zurara, slavery liberated Africans from their bestial condition, introducing
them to Christianityand Europeanculture.
After the spectacle described by Zurara, slaves were taken from Africa
with increasing regularity. The moral justifications for the slave trade were
taken for granted. Rising demand in Portugal, Spain, and later in the
Atlantic islands meant increasing profits for merchants and traders,and set-
tlements expanded along the African coast to support the trade. After several
military defeats at the hands of coastal African nations, the Portugueseaban-
doned armed action in favor of peaceful trade as a means of obtaining slave
labor.62 By I448, the first permanent trading post was established on the
island of Arguim, just off the coast of Mauritania. In I466, Santiago in the
Cape Verde Islands had become a center of trade with Upper Guinea from
Senegal to Cape Palmas.63 In I482, the first slave fort, Sao Jorge da Mina, on
the coast of present-day Ghana, allowed the Portuguese to extend the
boundaries of their trade in human cargoes as far south as Kongo and
Angola. The Portuguese commercial monopoly in West Africa acquired the
blessing of the church with Romanus pontifex (I455) and gained Castilian
Christiansviewed non-Christiansand the converted (converses)as culturallyand socially inferior.

60 Saunders, Social Historyof Black Slavesand Freedmenin Portugal,i67. See also Crdnica
de Espanha de 1344, vol. 2 (Lisbon, 1954), 174, i8o, and Crdnica de Portugal '4i9, ed. A.
MagalhaesBasto under the title Crdnicade CincoReisde Portugal(Porto, 1945), 63-64.
61 Zurara, Conquestsand Discoveriesof Henrythe Navigator,trans. Miall, 173.
62 For a recent analysis of the Portuguese trade in Africa see Ivana Elbl, "Cross-Cultural
Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441-1521, Journal of World
History,3 (1992), i65-204.
63 Saunders,BlackSlavesand Freedmenin Portugal,5.

i62 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
recognition with the signing of the Treaty of Alcacqovas(I479). Until that

time, the Castilians challenged Portuguese claims with frequent raids on the
West African coast. Under the treaty, Castile renounced all claims to West
Africa in exchange for unchallenged rights to the Canary Islands. The
Castilian-Portugueserivalrythus came to an end.64
During these formative years of the slave trade, the Portuguese were
undoubtedly influenced by the attitudes of their Muslim trading partners
along the Saharan littoral. Not an insignificant number of sub-Saharan
Africans toiled in salt mines, worked in fields, and tended herds on the
Saharanfrontier.65The diminished status of black Africans must have been
clear to the Portuguesein both the cultural and the religious practices of the
Muslims. We have already discussed the myriad negative racial stereotypes
that characterized Muslim thought regarding black pagans. In addition,
light-skinned Muslims along the West African coast ignored their own reli-
gious canon by enslaving black Muslims.
In their attitudes toward blacks, the Portuguesefollowed where Muslim
slavershad led. In I392, the black king of Bornu (present-daynorthernNigeria)
wrote the sultan of Egypt protestingthe pillage of his land and the enslavement
of his people. Even though his people were free Muslims, the Arabs took his
"peopleas merchandise"and sold them to slave dealers.In his appeal,the king
noted that his nation was founded by an Arab, thereby proving his people's
Muslim authenticity.66The problem of Arab Muslims illegallyenslavingblack
Muslims persistedthroughoutthe sixteenthand seventeenthcenturiesand even
into the nineteenth century in West Africa, provoking commentary from
Islamicjuristsand historiansalike.67That some of these capturedMuslimswere
sent to Portugal via Arguim seems likely given the diversion of the trans-
Saharantradeto Arguim by the I450s. It is not unreasonableto suggestthat the
Portuguesesaw the maltreatmentof blacks (Muslim or pagan) by Muslims and
acted similarly, even adopting the same racial justifications of their Muslim
tradingpartnersalong the West Africancoast.
The crucial difference between Muslim and Portuguesevariantsof racial
ideology was that Muslim racismwas constantly subject to scrutiny by jurists
and scholars. In addition, Islamic law prohibited the enslavement of other
Muslims, including blacks. Despite recurrentenslavement of black adherents
to the Islamic faith, there were numerous examples of black Islamic king-
doms in West Africa. The Muslims created a plethora of racist ideas, but it
was the Iberians who, in conjunction with a rising demand for slave labor,
turned these ideas into a coherent ideology.
The number of slaves transported from West Africa to Portugal
between I44i and I500 is difficult to determine, but it was certainly large
and steadily increasing. Zurara reported that from I44I to I448 about 924
64Russell-Wood, "BeforeColumbus," I37.

65Austen, "Trans-SaharanSlave Trade,"46.
66Al-Qalqashandi, Subh al-A'sha, vol. 8 (Cairo, 1313-13i9/i895-19o1), ii6-17, quoted in
Lewis, Raceand Slaveryin the Middle East, 53.
67 Lewis, Raceand Slaveryin the Middle East, 57-58.

IBERIAN ROOTS OF RACIST THOUGHT i63
blacks were brought from Africa to Portugal.68With the decline in the flow
of slaves from the Black Sea countries in the I450s, the African trade became
the principal supplier for Spain and Portugal. The Venetian merchant
Cadamosto reported that 8oo-i,ooo slaves passed through Portuguese ports
each year.69 By the turn of the sixteenth century, Pereira estimated that
200-400 slaves were brought annually from the Senegal River basin, and an
annual total of 3,500 were shipped from Upper Guinea.70A.J.R. Russell-Wood
conservativelyestimates that Portugal took 8o,ooo slaves from sub-Saharan
Africa in the fifty years before I492.71 Other historians suggest that the
Portugueseacquiredas many as I50,000 slaves during this period.72In many
partsof Portugal,blacksquickly becamethe dominant source of slave labor.
The principal marketsfor Portugal'sAfrican slaves were Castile and later
the Antilles. Despite the increasing numbers of slaves arriving in Portugal,
slave prices rose owing primarily to foreign demand. As early as I462, the
trader Diogo Valarinho obtained permission to transport slaves from
Portugal to Castile. Four years later, a Bohemian traveler, Vaclav Sasek,
commented that the king of Portugal made more money selling slaves to for-
eigners "than from the taxes levied on the whole kingdom."73In I472 and
I473, the Portuguese Cortes requested that black slaves not be exported
because they performed the valuable work of clearing land and draining
marshes.74There is no indication why whites, slave or free, could not have
done this work. Presumably,such back-breakingtasks were reservedonly for
blacks. King Alfonso V, however, refused to restrict slave exports because of
the enormous profits. The one stipulation he did make was that all slaves
from Guinea had to pass through Portugal to be taxed before being sent to
other countries. African slaves reached the cities and towns of Castile via
overland routes as well as by sea, making the African presence felt across the
whole peninsula.
Ports from Seville to Valencia saw a steady rise in the number of black
slaves sent from Lisbon, especially after I480. The numbers of black slaves
recorded in Seville's official notarial registers between I453 and I489 seem
68 Zurara, Conquestsand Discoveriesof Henry the Navigator, trans. Miall, 252. The number
of slaves reported by Zurarahas been challenged by some scholars. Even the various versions of
his chronicles are inconsistent. I have chosen the lowest of the figures.
69 Saunders,BlackSlavesand Freedmenin Portugal,i9.
70 Pereira,Esmeraldode Situ Orbis,ed. Kimble, 78, ioi.
71 Russell-Wood, "BeforeColumbus," 148.
72 Godinho suggests that between 140,000 and I50,ooo heads were exported from Arguim
and Sierra Leone between 144i and 1505, in Os Descobrimentos,i6i. Boxer suggests that I50,000
slaves were shipped to Portugal, in PortugueseSeaborneEmpire, 31. Jose Ramos Tinhardo esti-
matesbetween117,000 and141,ooo between144i and1495, in OsNegrosemPortugal.Umapre-
senca silenciosa(Lisbon, i988), 8o. All these estimates substantially exceed Philip D. Curtin's
estimate of 33,500 slaves imported into Europe between 145i and I500, in The Atlantic Slave
Trade:A Census(Madison, i969), II5-i6.
73 Sasek, CommentariusBrevis (Olomouc, 1577), quoted in Saunders, Black Slaves and
Freedmenin Portugal,28.
74 Saunders,BlackSlavesand Freedmenin Portugal,28.

understated:only thirty-one black slaves are noted for this twenty-seven-year

span, whereas for the years I483-I489, parish records indicate fifty.75During
I495 and I496 alone, as many as 300 arrivedin Seville. By the middle of the
next century, observerscompared the city to a giant chessboardwith equal
numbers of black and white chessmen.76The figures for Valencia are more
reliable owing to the survivalof tax registersrecording slave sales in the city.
Before I489, perhaps no more than fifty slaves per year were shipped from
Lisbon to Valencia. Recognizing the strength of the market, merchants sent
an averageof 233 per year from I489 to I497.77As the numbers continued to
mount, the white Iberian response to the large influx of blacks showed the
institutional depth of racism.
Slave Life
Though blacks in Iberia enjoyed a certain degree of mobility within the

slave setting, they were still regardedas culturally inferior and were subject
to the whims of the white ruling class. A significant number was employed
in a domestic capacity. These slaves played a limited economic role, symbol-
izing instead the prestige and wealth of the slaveholder. The most arduous
work was reserved for blacks. In Portugal, they cleared land and dug
drainageditches. In Seville, they cleared mule droppings from the streets and
plazas.78 In Cadiz in I486, fifty-two black slaves sweated in a salt mine. In
other parts of Andalusia, blacks toiled in soap factories and transported bar-
rels of water across great distances by mule.79 Free black women worked as
washerwomen and prostitutes.
Portuguese and Castilian law recognized slaves as people with legal
rights. The lives of black slaves were subject to the same protection as those
of white noblemen. The murder of a slave by anyone, including his or her
master, was punishable by death. There is no evidence to suggest that any-
one was ever in fact executed for killing a slave. Murderers of blacks or of
lower-class whites often were able to strike deals with the crown, substituting
military service or monetary compensation or both for capital punishment.80
Though slaves had legal rights, their civil status was severely circumscribed.
Slaves were not considered legal inhabitants of the towns where they lived.
They could not testify in court except under exceptional circumstances, and
then only if called by a judge. They had no property rights; the master
owned the slave and all of the slave's possessions.
75 Alfonso Franco Silva, La esclavituden Sevillay su tierraa fines de la edad media (Seville,
I980), 150.
Dominguez Ortiz, "La esclavitud en Castilla durante la Edad Moderna,"
76 Antonio
Estudiosde Historia Socialde Espafia,2 (1952), 377-78.
77 A. Teixeira da Mota, A/guns Aspectos da Colonizafdo e do ComercioMaritimo dos
Portuguesesna Africa Ocidentalnos SiculosXV e XVI (Lisbon, 1976), 8-9.
78 Franco Silva, La esclavituden Sevilla, I98.
79 Franco Silva, La Esclavituden Andalucia1450-1550 (Granada,1992), 99-101.
80 Saunders,Black Slavesand Freedmenin Portugal,II5-i6.

IBERIAN ROOTS OF RACIST THOUGHT i65
The social lives of slaves were also severely restricted, especially after
blacks began to dominate the servile population. Seville's slaves frequented
the taverns and inns of the city, at times becoming drunk and disorderly.
The heavy consumption of alcohol at these and other social gatherings led
municipal officials to limit the number of slaves who could assemble in one
place and sometimes to prohibit slave gatherings altogether.81In the streets
of Seville, whites openly insulted blacks with "the customary sidewalk jeer
[estornudo]."82By the reign of Ferdinand and Isabellain the I470s, the city's
black population had grown so large that the crown elected "to place them
under greaterroyal supervision and control."83The Iberians'reaction to the
black presence-from the average worker on the street to the king and
queen-was one that can only be characterizedas racist.
Racism without Race
Most theorists agree that there is scant evidence of a well-developed and

articulatedracist ideology in fifteenth-centuryChristian society in Iberia and
certainly not in the Muslim societies it supplanted. The classification of
human beings according to race was not then common. Rather, the treat-
ment of black Africans from the Middle Ages to the early modern period
appearsto be racism without race. The classification of human beings based
on pseudoscientific claims during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
gave greater legitimacy to racism, but the science of race merely reinforced
notions of biology that had been evolving for centuries. Orlando Patterson
has commented that "the absence of an articulated doctrine of racial superi-
ority does not necessarilyimply behavioraltolerance in the relations between
peoples of somatically different groups."84This was true in Iberia. Even
though a fully developed ideology of race was not articulated, fifteenth-
century white Iberians made distinctions among peoples based on skin color
and attributed less worth to human beings who had black or brown skins.
The conquest of the Americas and the classification of the indigenous
peoples according to race may be understood as part of a process that began
with the expulsion of the Muslims from Granada and continued with the
Iberian invasions of the Atlantic islands and Africa. Almost immediately on
his arrivalin the Caribbean,Columbus commented on the color of the peo-
ples he encountered-"the color of Canarians, neither black nor white."85
This reference to the Guanches of the Canary Islands establishes a striking
parallel between the experiencesof Atlantic African peoples and the expecta-
tions that would be imposed on those newly encountered "indios."Iberians
had long decided that among those who were naturally suited for slavery
81 Ruth Pike, Aristocratsand Traders:Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century (Ithaca,

1972), i8i; Franco Silva, Esclavituden Sevilla, 2i6.
82 Pike, Aristocratsand Traders,i87-88.
83 Ibid., 174.
84 Orlando Patterson,Slaveryand SocialDeath:A ComparativeStudy(Cambridge,i982), 420.
85 ChristopherColumbus, Diario de a bordo,ed. Luis Arranz(Madrid, i985), 91.

i66 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
were individuals who were "the color of Canarians,"so it comes as no sur-

prise that in the same journal entry Columbus wrote that the natives would
make "good servants."86Columbian discourse was explicit. There were three
racial possibilities-white, black, and the color of Canarians. For people of
any color but white, life's possibilities were severely circumscribed. By the
time of the Columbian encounter, race had evolved into an independent and
deeply etched element of the Iberian consciousness, not simply a manifesta-
tion of more fundamental social and cultural relationships. Race, and espe-
cially skin color, defined the contours of power relationships.As a result of
centuries of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish inscription in the social order,
racial stratification attained its own independent logic, deeply woven into
the social and cultural fabric of fifteenth-century Iberia. The legacy of
Iberianracismwould endure in the Americas.87
Iberian racism was a necessary precondition for the system of human
bondage that would develop in the Americas during the sixteenth century
and beyond. The African slave trade was only in its infancy when the first
blacks were brought to Hispaniola in I502, but the racial attitudes of the
Spanish were alreadyfirmly fixed. Aversion to black Africans permitted their
exploitation in ways the colonists never considered for white slaves or ser-
vants. The virulence of racism increased as economic imperatives fueled
Africans' debasement, but the origins of racism preceded the emergence of
capitalism by centuries. Biological assumptions that were familiar to a nine-
teenth-century Cuban slaveowner would have been recognizable to his fif-
teenth-century Spanish counterpart. The rhetoric of debasement knew no
national or chronological boundaries. The racist attitudes that existed in
tenth-century Andalusia are in many respects prominent in the American
mind today, a stark expression of their longevity, a continuing reminder of
the civilized West's failures, and a stain on its conscience.
86 Ibid.
87 I have chosen to end with the encounter of Americans and Europeansbecause it seems
an appropriate watershed. Racial discourse in the early colonial period of Latin America
remains a ripe topic, one that I intend to explore further.


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The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought

Author(s): James H. Sweet

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 15:01:19 PM

T HE question why African slavery emerged as the primary form of

The Williamand Mary Quarterly,3d Series, Vol. LIV, No. i, JanuaryI997

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This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 15:01:19 PM

phenotype operated in such a way that sub-SaharanAfricans were unable to

The racist ideologies of fifteenth-centuryIberia grew out of the develop-

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 15:01:19 PM

distinction, which identified blacks as subordinateOthers, was not limited to

Many of the characteristicsattributed to black Africansas a result of climatic

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This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 15:01:19 PM

isolation and do not congregate,and eat each other."16In his racialhierarchy,

Although the passagemakes no referenceto slaveryor blackness,it presents a

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according to which the hair of his descendants would not extend

In Muslim cosmology, the sub-SaharanAfrican emerged as the son of Ham,

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Non-Muslim Responses to Africans

During the period of Muslim domination of Spain and Portugal,

Histoire de l'EspagneMusulmane,vol. 3 (Paris, 1953), 178. Based on the number of mulattoes in

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At the markets negresses were much in evidence; the darker the

Africano pelos portugueses antes dos contactos," in 0 Confrontodo Qlhar: 0 encontrodospovos

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Amid the religious turmoil of twelfth-centuryNavarre,Benjamindemon-

In the deserts of Ethiopia there is a people who live without law

Though Christians and Muslims regardedone another as infidels, adherents

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Mary.31Many of the poems are believed by scholars to have been original

31 Alfonso X, el Saibio,Cantigasde Santa Maria, 4 vols., ed. Walter Mettmann (Coimbra,

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Another Christian treatise that marginalizes blacks was written by an

35 "Negrocomepez" (line 63).

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The Decline of the Mediterranean Slave Trade

While Christian Iberia inherited and embraced many of the negative

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Mediterraneantrade routes of any of the Iberian kingdoms. As a result, they

41 Verlinden, L'esclavagedans l'EuropeMediivale, 548-59, 589, 593.

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small amount of gold. This trade demonstratedthe lack of economic value of

The Justfication of Slavery

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1515, King Manuel I commented on the growing number of dead Africans

49 Victor Ribeiro, A Santa Casada Misericdrdiade Lisboa(Lisbon, 1902), i82-83.

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The Beginnings of the African Slave Trade

Lanqarotede Freitas'sdelivery of 235 Idzdgenand "blackamoor"57 slaves

it was truly a thing astonishing to behold; for among them were

Though Zurara was troubled by what he saw, he was quick to juxtapose

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Zuraraemployed a European measureof morality and civility, declaring that

Christiansviewed non-Christiansand the converted (converses)as culturallyand socially inferior.

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recognition with the signing of the Treaty of Alcacqovas(I479). Until that

64Russell-Wood, "BeforeColumbus," I37.