Historical Aspects of Race Relations

This article is taken from chapter 16 of Caste, Class, and Race 
by black socialist scholar, Dr Oliver Cromwell Cox. This seminal work was 
first published in the United States in 1948.

In a discussion of "the origin" of race relations it should be well to 
determine at the outset exactly what we are looking for. We shall proceed, 
therefore, by first eliminating certain concepts that are commonly confused 
with that of race relations. These are: ethnocentrism, intolerance, and 
"racism".

Ethnocentrism, as the sociologists conceive of it, is a social attitude 
which expresses a community of feeling in any group — the "we" feeling as 
over against the "others." This attitude seems to be a function of group 
solidarity, which is not necessarily a racial phenomenon. Neither is social 
intolerance ... racial antagonism, for social intolerance is social 
displeasure or resentment against that group which refuses to conform to 
the established practices and beliefs of the society. Finally, the term 
"racism" as it has been recently employed in the literature seems to refer 
to a philosophy of racial antipathy. Studies on the origin of racism 
involve the study of the development of an ideology, an approach which 
usually results in the substitution of the history of a system of 
rationalisation for that of a material social fact. Indeed, it is likely to 
be an accumulation of an erratic pattern of verbalisations cut free from 
any on-going social system.

What then is the phenomenon, the beginnings of which we seek to determine? 
It is the phenomenon of the capitalist exploitation of peoples and its 
complementary social attitude. Again, one should miss the point entirely if 
one were to think of racial antagonism as having its genesis in some 
"social instinct" of antipathy between peoples. Such an approach ordinarily 
leads to no end of confusion.

The Beginning of Racial Antagonism

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. In a previous chapter on "the origin of caste" 
we have attempted to show that race conflict did not exist among the early 
Aryans in India, and we do not find it in other ancient civilisations. Our 
hypothesis is that racial exploitation and race prejudice developed among 
Europeans with the rise of capitalism and nationalism, and that because of 
the world-wide ramifications 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 civilisations from which Greece took a significant 
cultural heritage. There seems to be no basis for imputing racial 
antagonism to the Egyptians, Babylonians, or Persians. At any rate, the 
Greeks were the first European people to enter the stream of eastern 
Mediterranean civilisation, and the possibility of racial exploitation did 
not really occur until the Macedonian conquest. Our point here is, however, 
that we do not find race prejudice even in the great Hellenistic empire 
which extended deeper into the territories of coloured people than any 
other European empire up to the end of the fifteenth century.

The Hellenic Greeks had a cultural, not a racial, standard of belonging, so 
that their basic division of the peoples of the world were Greeks and 
barbarians — the barbarians having been all those persons who did not 
possess the Greek culture, especially its language. This is not surprising, 
for the culture of peoples is always a matter of great moment to them. But 
the people of the Greek city-states, who founded colonies among the 
barbarians on the shores of the Black Sea and of the Mediterranean, 
welcomed those barbarians to the extent that they were able to participate 
in Greek culture, and intermarried freely with them. The Greeks knew that 
they had a culture superior to those of the barbarians, but they included 
Europeans, Africans, and Asiatics in the concept Hellas as these peoples 
acquired a working knowledge of the Greek culture.

The experience of the later Hellenistic empire of Alexander tended to be 
the direct contrary of modern racial antagonism. The narrow patriotism of 
the city-states was given up for a new cosmopolitanism. Every effort was 
made to assimilate the barbarians to Greek culture, and in the process a 
new Greco-Oriental culture with a Greco-Oriental ruling class came into 
being. Alexander himself took a Persian princess for his wife and 
encouraged his men to intermarry with the native population. In this empire 
there was an estate, not a racial, distinction between the rulers and the 
un-Hellenised natives.

Moreover, the inclination of Alexander to disregard even cultural 
differences in his policy toward the peoples of his empire seemed to have 
stimulated one of the most remarkable philosophies of all time: that of the 
fundamental equality of all human beings. In Athens, in about 300 BC, Zeno 
developed a system of thought called stoicism which held in part that "all 
men should be fellow citizens; and there should be one life and order, as 
of a flock pasturing together, which feeds together by a common law." This 
doctrine was not a reaction to race prejudice but rather to certain 
invidious cultural distinctions among the peoples of the time; and the idea 
has come down to us by way of the Roman law, the preaching of St. Paul, and 
the writings of the philosophers of the Enlightenment. It has been given a 
democratic emphasis in the American Declaration of Independence and in 
amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

The next great organisation of peoples about the Mediterranean Sea — and 
in so far as European civilisation is concerned this may be thought of as 
constituting the whole world — was the Roman Empire. In this civilisation 
also we do not find racial antagonism, for the norm of superiority in the 
Roman system remained a cultural-class attribute. The basic distinction was 
Roman citizenship, and gradually this was extended to all freeborn persons 
in the municipalities of the empire. Slaves came from every province, and 
there was no racial distinction among them. Sometimes the slaves, 
especially the Greeks, were the teachers of their masters; indeed, very 
much of the cultural enlightenment of the Romans came through slaves from 
the East. Because slavery was not a racial stigma, educated freedmen, who 
were granted citizenship upon emancipation, might rise to high positions in 
government or industry. There were no interracial laws governing the 
relationship of the great mass of obscure common people of different 
origin. Moreover, the aristocracy of the empire, the senators and 
equites, was constituted largely from responsible provincials in the 
imperial administration.

One should not mistake the social relationship among the various social 
estates of the Greek and Roman world for race relations. The Spartiates, 
Perioikoi, and Helots of Laconia, for instance, were not races but 
social estates; neither did the Metics, the alien residents of 
Periclean Athens, constitute a race. In early republican Rome intermarriage 
was forbidden between the privileged patrician class and the plebeian mass, 
but this was a social-estate partition rather than a racial accommodation.

If we have not discovered interracial antagonism in ancient Greece and 
Rome, the chances of discovering it in the system which succeeded the fall 
of the Roman Empire are even more remote. With the rise of the politico-
religious system of Christianity, Western culture may be thought of as 
having entered its long period of gestation. Its first fruits were the 
Crusades. But during all this time and even after the Renaissance the 
nature of the movement and of the social contact of peoples in this area 
precluded the possibility of the development of race prejudice.

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 a 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 North toward the general 
area of the Mediterranean no nationalistic sentiments stood in the way to 
limit their amalgamation with the native populations.

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 coloured 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 out fought him. The 
Huns, Saracens, 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 both the economic base and religious sanctions of Mohammedanism are 
opposed to race prejudice. Under Mohammedanism — 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 proselytising culture.

In Europe itself the policies of the Roman Catholic Church presented a bar 
to the development of racial antagonism. The Church, which gradually 
attained more or less religious, economic, and ideological dominance, had a 
folk and personal — not a territorial or racial — norm of belonging. The 
fundamental division of human beings was Christian and non-Christian. Among 
the non-Christians the heathen, the infidel, and the heretic were 
recognised by differential negative attitudes; however, as a means of 
entering the Christian community, conversion or recantation was freely 
allowed and even sought after. There was in medieval Europe — indeed in 
the Christian world — an effective basis for the brotherhood of peoples. 
Although a man's economic, contractual relationship in his community 
determined his livelihood, to be excommunicated by the Church almost had 
the effect of putting him beyond the purview of society itself. 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 and the 
circumnavigation of the globe, however, that the movement assumed a 
decidedly irreversible trend. The period between the First Crusade and the 
discovery of America continued to be characterised by the religious view of 
world order; but it set a pattern of dealing with non-Christian peoples 
which was to be continued, minus only its religious characteristics, to 
this day. To the extent that the religious controls remained effective, 
racial antagonism did not develop; what really developed was a Jew-heathen-
infidel antagonistic complex which was to colour European thought for some 
centuries.

Up to the eleventh century Christian Europe was hemmed in from the North, 
East, and South by heathens and infidels; the Mediterranean was almost 
encircled by the Arabian Mohammedans, a people whose culture was superior 
to that of the northern Europeans. In the eleventh century, however, under 
the organising influence of the popes, the holy warriors of Christendom 
began to carry conquering crusades into the territory of the heathen Slavic 
and infidel Asiatic peoples. As a general rule the Church made the lands 
and even the peoples of the non-Christian world the property of the 
Crusaders, and the trader ordinarily followed the cross.

In fact, it was this need for trade with the East, especially by the 
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese merchants, and its obstruction by the 
Mohammedans whose country lay across their path in the Near East, which 
induced the Portuguese, in the fifteenth century, to feel their way down 
the African coast in the hope of sailing around this continent to the East 
Indies. Here began the great drama that was, in a few hundred years, to 
turn over the destiny of the world to the decisions of businessmen. But our 
concern at this point is to indicate that racial antagonism had not yet 
developed among the Europeans.

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 
traveler 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.

But when the Portuguese began to inch their way down the African coast they 
knew that the Moors and heathens whom they encountered were inferior to 
them both as fighters and as culture builders. This, however, led to no 
conclusions about racial superiority. Henry the Navigator, himself, sought 
in those parts a Christian prince, Prester John, with whom he planned to 
form an alliance "against the enemies of the faith". All through the latter 
half of the fifteenth century the Portuguese sailors and explorers kept up 
this search for the kingdom of the lost black prince.

Of more significance still is the fact that there was as yet no belief in 
any cultural incapacity of these colored people. Their conversion to 
Christianity was sought with enthusiasm, and this transformation was 
supposed to make the Africans the human equals of all other Christians. The 
Portuguese historian, Gomes Eannes de Azurara, writing in the middle of the 
fifteenth century, gives us some idea of the religious motives for Prince 
Henry's exploits among the peoples on the West African coast. One reason 
for the Navigator's slave raids:

"... was his great desire to make increase in the faith of our lord Jesus 
Christ and to bring to him all souls that should be saved, — understanding 
that all the mystery of the Incarnation, Death, and Passion of our Lord 
Jesus Christ was for this sole end — namely the salvation of lost souls, 
whom the said Lord Infant (Henry) by his travail and spending would fain 
bring into the true faith. For he perceived that no better offering could 
be made unto the Lord than this. For if God promised to return one hundred 
goods for one, we may justly believe that for such great benefits, that is 
to say, for so many souls as were saved by the efforts of this Lord, he 
will have so many hundreds of guerdons in the Kingdom of God, by which his 
spirit may be glorified after this life in the celestial realm. For I that 
wrote this history saw so many men and women of those parts turned to the 
holy faith, that even if the Infant had been a heathen, their prayers would 
have been enough to have obtained his salvation. And not only did I see the 
first captives, but their children and grandchildren as true Christians as 
if the Divine grace breathed in them and imparted to them a clear knowledge 
of itself."

This matter of cultural conversion is crucial for our understanding of the 
development of racial antagonism. For the full profitable exploitation of a 
people, the dominant group must devise ways and means of limiting that 
people's cultural assimilation. So long as the Portuguese and Spaniards 
continued to accept the religious definition of human equality, so long 
also the development of race prejudice was inhibited. Although it is true 
that the forays on the African coast were exceedingly ruthless, the 
Portuguese did not rationalise the fact with a racial argument. To kill or 
to take into slavery the heathen or infidel was to serve the highest 
purpose of God. As Azurara pointed out: "... though their bodies were now 
brought into subjection, that was a small matter in comparison to their 
souls, which would now possess true freedom for evermore". In granting to 
Prince Henry a "plenary indulgence", Pope Eugenius IV gave "to each and all 
those who shall be engaged in the said war (slave raids), complete 
forgiveness of all their sins."

The Portuguese people themselves had developed no racial hatred for the 
captives. Azurara relates how the townspeople at Lagos wept in sympathy for 
the suffering of the Moors as families were broken to be distributed among 
different masters. And, it seems, the captives were quite readily 
assimilated into the population.

"... from this time forth (after their partition) they began to acquire 
some knowledge of our country, in which they found great abundance; and our 
men began to treat them with great favour. For as our people did not find 
them hardened in the belief (i.e. Islam) of the Moors, and saw how they 
came unto the law of Christ with a good will, they made no difference 
between them and their free (Portuguese) servants, born in our own country. 
But those whom they took (captured) while still young, they caused to be 
instructed in mechanical arts. And those whom they saw fitted for managing 
property, they set free and married to women who were natives of the land 
(of Portugal), making with them a division of their property as if it had 
been bestowed on those who married them by the will of their own 
fathers.... Yea, and some widows of good family who bought some of these 
female slaves, either adopted them or left them a portion of their estate 
by will, so that in the future they married right well, treating them as 
entirely free. Suffice it that I never saw one of these slaves put in irons 
like other captives, and scarcely any one who did not turn Christian and 
was not gently treated.

"And I have been asked by their lords to the baptisms and marriages of 
such; at which they, whose slaves they were before, made no less solemnity 
than if they had been their children or relations." (Azurara The 
Discovery and Conquest of Guinea)

The Portuguese had no clear sense of racial antagonism, because its 
economic and rationalistic basis had not yet developed among them. Indeed 
the Portuguese and Spaniards never became fully freed of the crusading 
spirit, which constantly held in check their attainment of a clear 
appreciation of the values of competitive labour exploitation. The Church 
received its share of African servants; as yet, however, it had no idea of 
the economic uses of segregation and "cultural parallelism" — of the 
techniques for perpetuating the servile status of the black workers. It had 
developed no rationalisations of inborn human inferiority in support of a 
basic need for labour exploitation.