4 ms·

That centers race a bit much. There weren't black people in medieval Europe, but nor were there white people. We're projecting contemporary racial categories on

That centers race a bit much. There weren't black people in medieval Europe, but nor were there white people. We're projecting contemporary racial categories onto a past where they didn't exist. The question of whether there were black people in Europe is akin to asking what did people there think of the USSR. That said, yes, people we'd currently code as black existed in Europe, though disproportionately in entrepots in the Mediterranean. If you proceed to e.g. Elizabethan England, most people wouldn't have been confused by the sight of a black person (cf Othello), though they'd likely be something of a curiousity (though still not considered black in the contemporary sense).

Maursault 4y ago
> There weren't black people in medieval Europe But there definitely were.[1] Also, the idiots complaining about black elves are racist morons. There were, in fact, black elves in Tolkien's world. Though never depicted as such by artists, Eöl the Dark Elf (who was not Moriquendë, i.e. not a member of the Moriquendi or the Elves of Darkness) probably wasn't white. In The Silmarillion, Tolkien goes out of his way to describe Eöl's son as having white skin. There's no reason to do that unless his son was notably distinct in this way from his father. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors#Moors_of_Iberia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors#Moors_of_Iberia
- LEDThereBeLight 4y ago
  You’re not understanding his argument. Medieval Europe didn’t have this internalized concept of race or skin color like we do - they categorized people more by religion (catholic, Protestant, Muslim) or origin.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    Fair enough, but that still sounds absurdly idyllic and very hard to believe. I would expect it to be the opposite, that there was extreme racism even between different families within the same culture, and mostly only in Europe and not so much in the Middle and Far East. Europeans invented racism, and I would have expected it to have occurred around the fall of the Western Roman Empire. But this is all conjecture.
    - scarmig 4y ago
      It wasn't idyllic. The Holy Roman Empire suffered millions of civilian deaths during the 30 years war (on the order of a third of its population). It's just the categories people used were things like region or (especially) religion. Race and racial ideology were developed in Europe, but it was in tandem with the modern era, not before it. Think 17th-19th centuries. It served a concrete purpose: to explain and justify how the leading European nations interacted with their colonial subjects. But there was no reason for race before colonialism, so it never developed because it would have served no purpose then.
      - Maursault 4y ago
        This idea of racism being a modern invention is merely an academic theory. There is no doubt there were periodic exterminations of Jews in classical antiquity and atrocities perpetrated against Jews throughout the Middle Ages. Antisemitism is racism. Though the word "race" was probably coined in tandem with British Imperialism, Black slavery and the modern era, race, in fact, does not exist. Race is entirely a social construction, and regardless of the words used in antiquity, the same concepts were used to discriminate against, stereotype, repress and enslave peoples from the very dawn of civilization.
    - setr 4y ago
      The in-groups and out-groups always exist, and will be at war perpetually. It’s naive to think such a division would begin and end at something so superficial as skin color; you can go much more specific. Why would the British man go out of his way to identify himself with those bloody red-haired potato-fetishizing Irishmen? Or the pompous Frenchmen who cover their pervasive stench in perfumes and jam lard into anything they can find in some depraved vision of “high couture”? Or the barbarians and savages of the east, who can’t tell the difference between a puff of wind and God? The 12th century African man hardly runs around thinking “we’re all black, so we’re all the same so nothing to fight about” — they just choose a different division and massacre one another on that basis You would only bother with white vs black racism when there’s enough blacks to identify against and vice versa; otherwise you choose different boundaries and compete on that. Religion, country, skin color, geography (eg mountain men vs hicks vs cityfolk); there’s more than enough choices to go around. And hell, there’s something stopping you from applying multiple boundaries simultaneously Your 16th century farming peasant in the corner of England doesn’t see enough Africans or Middle Easterns or Asians to wield race as an effective identity. Your Roman’s could have, but they also had quite the diverse array of colors and folks through varying conquest — race probably played a role in internal conflict (Roman vs roman) but even then religion was clearly the far stronger identifier and a much stronger motivator for their slaughters.
- pezezin 4y ago
  Moors are not black. Or maybe they are from an US point of view, but nobody in Europe would call them black. Africa is divided by the Sahara desert, and most black people come from Sub-Saharan Africa.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    From the Middle Ages through to the 17th century, Europeans depicted Moors as being black,[1] and referred to them as such. Black Africans were also called Moors and "blackmoors" during the same periods. Ignorant European royalty, courtesans, craftsmen, and peasants did not discriminate between foreign cultures: they were racist against all of them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moor%27s_head_(heraldry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moor%27s_head_(heraldry)

Maursault 4y ago

> There weren't black people in medieval Europe But there definitely were.[1] Also, the idiots complaining about black elves are racist morons. There were, in fact, black elves in Tolkien's world. Though never depicted as such by artists, Eöl the Dark Elf (who was not Moriquendë, i.e. not a member of the Moriquendi or the Elves of Darkness) probably wasn't white. In The Silmarillion, Tolkien goes out of his way to describe Eöl's son as having white skin. There's no reason to do that unless his son was notably distinct in this way from his father. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors#Moors_of_Iberia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors#Moors_of_Iberia

LEDThereBeLight 4y ago
You’re not understanding his argument. Medieval Europe didn’t have this internalized concept of race or skin color like we do - they categorized people more by religion (catholic, Protestant, Muslim) or origin.
- Maursault 4y ago
  Fair enough, but that still sounds absurdly idyllic and very hard to believe. I would expect it to be the opposite, that there was extreme racism even between different families within the same culture, and mostly only in Europe and not so much in the Middle and Far East. Europeans invented racism, and I would have expected it to have occurred around the fall of the Western Roman Empire. But this is all conjecture.
  - scarmig 4y ago
    It wasn't idyllic. The Holy Roman Empire suffered millions of civilian deaths during the 30 years war (on the order of a third of its population). It's just the categories people used were things like region or (especially) religion. Race and racial ideology were developed in Europe, but it was in tandem with the modern era, not before it. Think 17th-19th centuries. It served a concrete purpose: to explain and justify how the leading European nations interacted with their colonial subjects. But there was no reason for race before colonialism, so it never developed because it would have served no purpose then.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      This idea of racism being a modern invention is merely an academic theory. There is no doubt there were periodic exterminations of Jews in classical antiquity and atrocities perpetrated against Jews throughout the Middle Ages. Antisemitism is racism. Though the word "race" was probably coined in tandem with British Imperialism, Black slavery and the modern era, race, in fact, does not exist. Race is entirely a social construction, and regardless of the words used in antiquity, the same concepts were used to discriminate against, stereotype, repress and enslave peoples from the very dawn of civilization.
  - setr 4y ago
    The in-groups and out-groups always exist, and will be at war perpetually. It’s naive to think such a division would begin and end at something so superficial as skin color; you can go much more specific. Why would the British man go out of his way to identify himself with those bloody red-haired potato-fetishizing Irishmen? Or the pompous Frenchmen who cover their pervasive stench in perfumes and jam lard into anything they can find in some depraved vision of “high couture”? Or the barbarians and savages of the east, who can’t tell the difference between a puff of wind and God? The 12th century African man hardly runs around thinking “we’re all black, so we’re all the same so nothing to fight about” — they just choose a different division and massacre one another on that basis You would only bother with white vs black racism when there’s enough blacks to identify against and vice versa; otherwise you choose different boundaries and compete on that. Religion, country, skin color, geography (eg mountain men vs hicks vs cityfolk); there’s more than enough choices to go around. And hell, there’s something stopping you from applying multiple boundaries simultaneously Your 16th century farming peasant in the corner of England doesn’t see enough Africans or Middle Easterns or Asians to wield race as an effective identity. Your Roman’s could have, but they also had quite the diverse array of colors and folks through varying conquest — race probably played a role in internal conflict (Roman vs roman) but even then religion was clearly the far stronger identifier and a much stronger motivator for their slaughters.
pezezin 4y ago
Moors are not black. Or maybe they are from an US point of view, but nobody in Europe would call them black. Africa is divided by the Sahara desert, and most black people come from Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Maursault 4y ago
  From the Middle Ages through to the 17th century, Europeans depicted Moors as being black,[1] and referred to them as such. Black Africans were also called Moors and "blackmoors" during the same periods. Ignorant European royalty, courtesans, craftsmen, and peasants did not discriminate between foreign cultures: they were racist against all of them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moor%27s_head_(heraldry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moor%27s_head_(heraldry)