Racisms

"Racisms impresses the reader by its author's vast reading, his thoroughness and precision . . . intellectual ambition, and [its] visual and textual sources." —Peter Burke, University of Cambridge
Racisms is the first comprehensive history of racism, from the Crusades to the twentieth century. Demonstrating that there is not one continuous tradition of racism, Francisco Bethencourt shows that racism preceded any theories of race and must be viewed within the prism and context of social hierarchies and local conditions. In this richly illustrated book, Bethencourt argues that in its various aspects, all racism has been triggered by political projects monopolizing specific economic and social resources.

Racisms focuses on the Western world, but opens comparative views on ethnic discrimination and segregation in Asia and Africa. Bethencourt looks at different forms of racism, and explores instances of enslavement, forced migration, and ethnic cleansing, while analyzing how practices of discrimination and segregation were defended.


This is a major interdisciplinary work that moves away from ideas of linear or innate racism and recasts our understanding of interethnic relations.


"Thanks to Francisco Bethencourt's brave, reflective, provocative, painstaking, and searching history, the problems [of racism] are clearer than ever before, and the continuing debates will be immeasurably better informed." —Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of 1492: The Year the World Began

"Dazzlingly learned and ambitious." —Stephen J. Whitfield, Patterns of Prejudice

"Bethencourt's incisive analysis ought to be compulsory reading in the think tanks, chanceries and ministries of the developed world." —Maria Misra, Prospect

"A superb monograph, well served by excellent illustrations." —Survival

"A tour de force." —Publishers Weekly