Racial Boundaries in Europe in the Eighteenth Century: A Historiographic Perspective

Abstract

The historiography of race in Europe is almost silent about the hardening of racial boundaries in the eighteenth century. Most of the literature on the concept of race in the twenty-first century states that in the eighteenth century, Europe became increasingly obsessed with racial categories, but these writings do not explore the reasons that made this possible. This paper seeks to examine the literature to address this conundrum. I contend that together with gender and sex, race became a category for building social hierarchies when Europe increasingly became urbanized and cosmopolitan with a considerable non-European population in the eighteenth century. Science was used to create racial lines and to deepen sexual differences even in the wake of calls for equality for all.