In the 1500s, there were next to no White Americans, much less White American racism. But some of the seeds had already been planted:
England in the 1500s:
- “Capitalist” values – By 1500, foreign travellers were already noticing certain things that made the English different from other people:
- extreme individualism / arrogance,
- overbearing pride,
- suspiciousness / an every-man-for-himself mindset,
- preoccupation with their own private interests,
- pursuit of money,
- lack of affection for their children.
Capitalism and Protestantism would strengthen these values, but they are older than either. They arose in the 1200s and 1300s with the breakdown of the old feudal order that tied man to land and kin. The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) and the weakening moral authority of the Catholic Church also helped to make the pursuit of wealth a way of life.
- property rights – By 1500, the rich and powerful were becoming yet more rich and powerful by fencing off or enclosing public lands, meadows and forests. This drove many into extreme poverty. That absolute right to private property over the public good will reach its most extreme form in the US, particularly its view of slaves as less than human.
- The Irish – Ireland was the dry run for North America. Views and policies first applied to the Irish would later be applied to Black and Native Americans: extreme ethnocentrism, stereotypes, dehumanization, plantations, massacres, genocide, deportation, slavery, taking land and creating a cheap labour force. The Irish were seen as lazy, dirty, immoral, lawless, lacking in self-control, and making poor use of the land. In short, they were seen as “savages”. Some of this goes all the way back to the late 1100s, when England first tried to rule Ireland, but some of it comes from the Spanish and how they dealt with the people of the Americas in the 1500s. The Protestant Reformation added religion to the mix:
- The Devil – was seen as taking over people and making them do his bidding. That is why witches were such a big deal. But it also allowed the English to see non-Christians, and even non-Protestants (like the Irish), as being in league with the Devil. That made it easier for the English to kill them.
- Lack of experience with physical differences – Unlike the Spanish and Portuguese, who used to be ruled by the Moors, some of them West African, the English had no long history of dealing with people who looked different than them whom they had to take seriously.
- Anglo-Saxonism – the English thought they were better than everyone else, arrogantly so, particularly because of their supposedly “Anglo-Saxon” laws and institutions. It was not about race till the 1700s. In the 1500s it was about making Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church seem right and good.
- The word “race” – meaning a breeding stock of horses – or of humans – entered the English language in the 1500s, as did “Negro” and “Indian”. All three came from Spanish. Race would not mean skin colour till the 1700s, but the seed had been planted.
– Abagond, 2015.
Source: “Race in North America” (2012) by Audrey Smedley and Brian D. Smedley.
See also:
- Racism before 1400
- The Spanish
- Ireland: a brief history
- English Americans / Anglo-Protestant culture
- White American racism: the 1600s
- slaveries compared
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Abagond,
thanks again for your insightful post. I do have some more questions: in the beginning of your text you wrote:
>…noticing certain things that made the English
> different from other people:
> extreme individualism / arrogance,
> overbearing pride,
> suspiciousness / an every-man-for-himself mindset,
> preoccupation with their own private interests,
> pursuit of money,
> lack of affection for their children.
That I find a very interesting notion, but where do you read this? Was this observed from within the Anglo-Saxon culture or by someone else?
I could easily imagine that this may be true, but I’d love to read more about the source..
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It’s amazing how so many seemingly separate pieces come together so neatly. The Protestant religion’s demonization of the other, the cultivation of English worship of money and self, the rampant enclosures and subsequent promotion of work as a bulwark against supposed laziness among the designated cheap labor classes…the pieces really do matter, don’t they?
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@Wogo –
“That I find a very interesting notion, but where do you read this? Was this observed from within the Anglo-Saxon culture or by someone else?
I could easily imagine that this may be true, but I’d love to read more about the source..”
I had a similar thought.
I’ve studied regionalism a fair amount. I know that US regions were heavily influenced by the settlement patterns from British regions.
There were several distinctive regions within England alone: Southern England centered on London and influenced by French Normans, East Anglia with Puritans many of whom had lived on mainland Europe for extended periods of time, Midlands where the Quakers mainly came from, and Northern England with more of a border influence.
It took a long time for the regions to fully begin to think of themselves as a single English culture, maybe not until the rise of the colonial empire and the need to distinguish themselves from foreigners (e.g., the Irish). Feudalism and the Commons lasted longer in some regions than in others. Also, Pagan traditions continued much longer in Southern England which influenced Shakespeare.
The 1500s seems too early for there being such a broad sense of the English people. But I’m not sure. I don’t know the 1500s all that well.
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Protestants and Calvinists grew specifically arrogant (they call it righteous) and stayed that way up to this day (as I can tell from experience).
But maybe this trait was there before Calvinism or Protestantism (or the English version thereof) and is part of the culture of pre-christian groups.
Other Anglo-Saxon “specialties” Abagond mentions are an extreme form individualism, excessive “preoccupation with their own private interests” and “lack of affection for their children”. But how are these different to other (European) countries, how and by what standards are these measured? Who claims this?
If this was the case, what are the reasons?
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I don’t know about this post..weren’t the Dutch the first ‘Great’ Protestant capitalists in early modern Europe?
And not sure if experience with ‘physical differences’ really made much of a difference. What about the Jews and Roma people?
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One thing not touched upon but part of the picture is the “protestant work ethic”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic
“Hard work and frugality, as well as social success and wealth, were thought to be two important consequences of being one of the elect; Protestants were thus attracted to these qualities and supposed to strive for reaching them.”
The other aspect in the rise of Capitalism was the legalization of usury during the 1500’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury
“The pivotal change in the English-speaking world seems to have come with lawful rights to charge interest on lent money,[8] particularly the 1545 Act, “An Act Against Usurie” (37 H. viii 9) of King Henry VIII of England.”
The “Act against usury” sounds like it prohibits usury but what it did was legalize usury and limit the interest rate to 10%.
As far was “the protestant work ethic” today in America I’d say its been replaced with a sense of entitlement. My observation is that immigrants have stronger work ethics then Americans do.
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@Abagond
I think the “Negro” race concept was introduced in the mid 1400s by the Portuguese, specifically by Gomes Eanes de Zurara. When he first traveled to West Africa, he spotted what he called “black things” and came to realise they were people. And when foreign slaves arrived in Portugal, he classified them as either white, mulatto or black.
@Michael Jon Barker
I wouldn’t put too much stock in the so-called “Protestant work ethic” in America It’s the most overrated concept in American history IMO. I mean these were the same people who held both American and African slaves.
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@Michael Jon Barker
I probably would not go so far as to say that there was no such thing as a Protestant Work Ethic. I’m sure that there were simple people who’s faith and philosophy of life included hard honest work.
But the other side of that coin is a terrible record of stealing land (that they didn’t work for) from the Native Americans and repeated treaty breaking. There was slavery, in which Blacks were brought in to do the hard work Whites did not want to do, then the Chinese, then the Filipinos, and today the Mexicans. For people with such a hard work ethic, they sure seemed to turn to many others to do the hard work when needed.
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The theological concept of “the elect” (predestination) along with the eschatological position called *post-millennialism, which Calvinism developed, laid the seed for manifest destiny. Capitalism watered that seed and the expansion of the “kingdom of God” by Gods “chosen people” began.
Christion theology at that time held to a geocentric cosmology that put the Earth at the center of the universe. And on that Earth were Gods “elected” people whose destiny it was to bring about the “kingdom of God”. And these “elected” people were made in God’s image, and their art and writings reflected this white Eurocentric construct.
Just as the physical universe was thought to be centered around the Earth, the psychological universe of Christians revolved around their image. And it is through this understanding that God had created everything for their benefit, that racism formed within the Eurocentric Christian worldview. This cosmic birthright was transferred from the Children of Israel to the white Christian tribes of the North.
“Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
*Postmillennialism teaches that the forces of Satan will gradually be defeated by the expansion of the Kingdom of God throughout history up until the second coming of Christ
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Interesting tidbit about how the word race came into being learned something new today.
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@ King. I guess what I was getting at is that you don’t have to be protestant to have a work ethic. I believe it comes from a convoluted understanding of “you will know them by their fruits” which Christians interpreted to mean wealth.
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To clarify I don’t mean all Christians interpret “you will know them by their fruits” in such a way but the Protestants of the Calvinist variety did. They also understood it to mean non believers as well as “savages” had bad fruit. Calvin also taught that the babies of unbelievers who died went directly to hell. So when we read about colonizers bashing babies against rocks it comes in part from this twisted view of God. The Puritans were Calvinists and they deliberately infected the local natives by giving them blankets infected with small pox. Biological warfare in the name of God. When your sermons are titled “Children of an angry God” that’s a clue that your f*cked up.
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@ WoGo
The bit about “capitalist” values comes from accounts by foreign travellers in England from about 1200 to 1500, especially from the 1400s. I give my source at the end of the post. They in turn got it from “The Origins of English Individualism” (1978) by Alan Macfarlane.
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@ Benjamin David Steele
Right, the regions of England were different and settled different parts of the US. The effects of that can still be seen today, I did a post on that:
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@ talibmensah
Not sure what you are getting at. There were Jews and Roma in England, but the English were not under their rule for hundreds of years.
I agree that the Dutch, like the English, were also highly Protestant and “capitalist” in their values.
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@ Michael Jon Barker
I do not agree about the hard work part. That seems to be self-serving mythology. Slaves were not seen as being one of the elect, far from it, while slave owners thought they were Christians in good standing.
The bit about wealth I do agree with: Protestant thinking helped to rationalize and sanctify the capitalist social order.
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Abagond said “I do not agree about the hard work part. That seems to be self-serving mythology.”
I hadn’t thought about that before but your right.
I was raised in a WASP household and attended protestant private schools from kindergarten to the 11th grade. At 17 I had enough and moved out and started working for myself. I never went to 12th grade. I was taught Calvinist theology. The school taught creationism for science and Christian revisionist history. Puritans were great people, the founding fathers led by God. lol
@Mirkwood. Their you go again pointing fingers. You don’t want to open that door to abuse within the Catholic church. Both denominations are responsible for a lot of evil and compliance in the face of racism and fascism.
I’d say some Christians did some good things and other Christians did some very bad things and leave it at that.
I read somewhere that child abuse/pedophilia happen at greater levels within religious institutions then within secular institutions. I think this is in part because people trust their church, think its a safe place and let their guard down.
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Michael Jon Barker said I read somewhere that child abuse/pedophilia happen at greater levels within religious institutions then within secular institutions. I think this is in part because people trust their church, think its a safe place and let their guard down.
Lets not forget Blind Faith here and the fact that many people believed that those that were in specific roles within the church were bringing forth the act of god. It is similar to the way that people used to trust Doctors diagnosis without question.
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@Omnipresent
“Lets not forget Blind Faith here and the fact that many people believed that those that were in specific roles within the church were bringing forth the act of god. It is similar to the way that people used to trust Doctors diagnosis without question.”—Very true.
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@ Abagond and Baker
I think you are both right. The theological construct described by Baker did exist in 18th centruy-calvinism (even though it was completly opposed to Calvin’s theology). If that can really be connected to the economic success of some calvinist regions is questionable. To expand that theory onto other forms of protestantism and beyond the era is false and a self-derving lie.
“I read somewhere that child abuse/pedophilia happen at greater levels within religious institutions then within secular institutions.”
I have no evidence, but I doubt that.
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The other thing to keep in mind is that Calvinism is far from dead.
It has mutated into Christian Reconstruction and Dominion theology. Rushdoony’s “Institutes of Biblical law” is a handbook for a Christian theocracy. Time magazine a few years back called the Chalcedon foundation “The think tank for the Christian right”. Gary North wrote “An economic commentary of the Bible” which I would describe as a Christianized Libertarian Corporatacracy.
We have members in the house and presidential candidates that think the Bible should be the standard of American law.
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@ Kartoffel
I wasn’t able to find statistics comparing child abuse between religious and secular institutions directly.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201103/misinformation-and-facts-about-secularism-and-religion
http://www.secularism.org.uk/reporting-of-child-abuse-should.html
http://www.cpiu.us/statistics-2/
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Kartoffel I stand corrected. This is from the CPIU statistics:
“No type of school was immune to abuse: public or private, religious or secular, rich or poor, urban or rural.”
Regardless parents should not think their children are safer within a religious institution.
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@abagond
I was surprised you omitted those groups, Roma and Jews. You can’t really talk about ‘proto-racism’ and exclude some of the most demonized groups in European history since the Middle Ages. There’s also the omission of ‘blacks’ in 1500s England here…
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I just read the link, hopefully it’s not circular (meaning I found it here and forgot about it), since it fits all too well in this discussion:
http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135
It claims that all our knowledge about social behaviour, ecomomic games, etc is derived from western persons, most of them academics (mainly students).
When some sociologists started to study standard behavioural tests in other parts of the world it turned out that these test showed severely different results. Even more: it showed that western social behaviour is often on the very end of the bell curve, i.e. rather extreme compared to other cultures.
The findings suggest that western people behave individualistic, rather rational in games, egotistical, etc. And Americans tend to be even more radical in this aspect than other westerners.
If we now assume that each cultural behaviour is adaptive in an evolutionary sense we could ask if this was the case with northern Europeans in general and the Anglo-Saxons in particular. Which was the ecological challenge (which can be another cultural fact of course) that bred this cultural behaviours?
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I see Pope Francis is apologising for years of abuse – too little too late or much needed and will restore faith again I wonder…
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Thanks for this post, Abagond-it really sums up the seeds of racism (particularly, in the Americas) as we now know it, today!
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@Abagond – “Right, the regions of England were different and settled different parts of the US. The effects of that can still be seen today, I did a post on that:”
Thanks for the link! Regionalism is a favorite topic of mine.
Besides the relation between European/British regionalism and American regionalism, I have some books about how Africans from different cultures were concentrated in different American regions as well (such as the differences between South Carolina and Virginia). And also some books about how African cultures specifically influenced American culture.
It is fascinating how cultural elements persist even over centuries.
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@ talibmensah
There were Jews, Roma and even people we would call Black in England in the 1500s, but White American racism grew not out of whatever prejudice there was against them, but against the Irish.
That means that racism was not historically “caused” by the mere fact of people looking different. Racists think otherwise, of course, but that is itself part of their racist world view.
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@abagond
I was thinking of pogroms, massacres, demonization, and dehumanization of Jews and so-called Gypsies as part of the origin of racism or ethnic prejudices in Europe. They’re all part of the story of ethnic prejudice and racism in Europe since the Middle Ages, and I was surprised you didn’t include that history. I fear I have made myself unclear…
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@ talibmensah
“@abagond
I see what you mean now. That kind of stuff probably had an effect, but the Irish were the template, not the Jews or Roma or even the Welsh or the Scottish.
Anti-Semitism was not racist till the 1800s, after White American racism was alreeady in full bloom. It did though, have an effect on the rise of racism, not by way of England, but by way of Spain:
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