Mixed Race Studies

“General Heads,” Great Minds, and the Genesis of Scientific Racism

Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies
Volume 15, Number 2, Spring 2015
pages 112-118

Robin Runia, Assistant Professor of English
Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, Louisiana

It is commonly presum’d that the Heat of the Climate wherein they live, is the reason, why so many Inhabitants of the Scorching Regions of Africa are Black; and there is this familiar Observation to Countenance this Conjecture, That we plainly see that Mowers, Reapers, and other Countrey-people, who spend the most part of the Hot Summer dayes expos’d to the Sun, have the skin of their Hands and Faces, which are the parts immediately Expos’d to the Sun and Air, made of a Darker Colour than before, and consequently tending to Blackness; And Contrarywise we observe that the Danes and some other people that Inhabit Cold Climates, and even the English who feel not so Rigorous a Cold, have usually Whiter faces than the Spaniards, Portugalls and other European Inhabitants of Hotter Climates. But this Argument I take to be far more Specious than Convincing. (153–54)

There is another Opinion concerning the Complexion of Negroes, that . . . the Blackness of Negroes [is] an effect of Noah’s Curse ratify’d by God’s, upon Cham; But though I think that even a Naturalist may without disparagement believe all the Miracles attested by the Holy Scriptures, yet in this case to flye to a Supernatural Cause, will, I fear, look like Shifting off the Difficulty, instead of Resolving it; for we enquire not the First and Universal, but the Proper, Immediate, and Physical Cause of the Jetty Colour of Negroes; And not only we do not find expressed in the Scripture, that the Curse meant by Noah to Cham, was the Blackness of his Posterity, but we do find plainly enough there that the Curse was quite another thing, namely that he should be a Servant of Servants, that is by an Ebraism, a very Abject Servant to his Brethren. . . . Nor is it evident that Blackness is a Curse, for Navigators tell us of Black Nations, who think so much otherwise of their own condition, that they paint the Devil White. Nor is Blackness inconsistent with Beauty, which even to our European Eyes consists not so much in Colour, as an Advantageous Stature, a Comely Symmetry of the parts of the Body, and Good Features in the Face. So that I see not why Blackness should be thought such a Curse to the Negroes, unless perhaps it be, that being wont to go Naked in those Hot Climates, the Colour of their Skin does probably, according to the Doctrine above deliver’d, make the Sunbeams more Scorching to them, than they would prove to a people of a White Complexion. (159–60)

Greater probability there is, That the Principal Cause (for I would not exclude all concurrent ones) of the Blackness of Negroes is some Peculiar and Seminal Impression. (161)

—Robert Boyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664)

The above extracts present Robert Boyle’s delineation of racialized difference, as produced and evaluated by the Royal Society; this delineation, production, and evaluation is the lifeblood of Cristina Malcolmson’s Studies of Skin Color in the Royal Society. Exploring the development of the modern notion of race within the context of colonialism, Malcolmson argues that “the attention to skin color in the Royal Society allowed racialization to develop and eventually flourish within the practices of the new science” (7). Specifically, attention to the imbrication of this process within institutional and economic commitments to British imperial dominance helps to fill in the gaps between an attention to skin color, consideration of its causes, and the dehumanization and subjugation of non-European individuals. Malcolmson’s focus on the Royal Society’s activities and publications and on Margaret Cavendish’s and Jonathan Swift’s reactions to them provides an important and nuanced contribution to the recent scholarship in this area as well as a call for additional work to be done.

The value of this volume lies in Malcolmson’s thorough presentation of compelling evidence and insightful close readings that expose the Royal Society’s complicity in the spread of racialized discourse and racist thought. In addition, Malcomson’s original contributions to scholarship on the historical construction of race include her critique of polygenesis as inherently racist and her methodical…