Race and Racism in Europe

Linguists argue that the word race entered Europe in the twelfth century through the Arabic term for head or chief, râs. By the sixteenth century, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and English each had a similar sounding locution that connoted some kind of difference within species or breeds. Even though the arrival of the term seemed to coincide with European contact with wider areas of the world, recent scholarship has tended to dismiss the idea that the contact between Europeans and others prior to the 1400s produced any semblance of a racial concept. Instead, race is seen as emerging alongside the idea of the nation as a way of establishing cultural and social boundaries and political authority in medieval Europe. Ironically, racial thought appeared in Europe not when difference was so visible but rather when it disappeared.

This disappearance occurred most clearly in medieval Spain with the mass conversion of Jews (and others) into Spanish Christian society. Beginning in the 1300s, this conversion was the by-product of a burgeoning national consolidation of political authority in the Iberian Peninsula. The creation of a centralized bureaucracy, the sense of a cohesive territory that had been "reconquered" from eighth-century Arab invaders, and the attempt to forge religious and cultural homogeneity signaled Spain's arrival as one of the first nation-states. Yet, the conversion of religious minorities to Catholicism placed increasing pressure on Spanish society to assimilate these "new" populations—the largest group, the Jewish conversos, alone surpassed 500,000 people—who were now free of legal proscriptions against "upward mobility." Converts had access to land and business ownership, to the university, and even employment within the powerful church—avenues that had long been closed to Jews. Attempts to regain some control over this group led to the passage of the blood-purity statutes (estatutos de limpieza de sangre), which barred those of "impure" blood from service in the church, from employment in public office, and from military service, especially in Spain's new colonies. The statutes presumed that converts were imbued with an inherent, immutable mark that rendered them all equally and unalterably different; conversion changed nothing.

Also, as legal statutes, the blood-purity conventions affected all of Spanish society. Thus, "old" Christians and converts alike were required to prove their lineage. Whether this system functioned as efficiently or monolithically as the statutes required has been a matter of continuing debate. But many scholars believe that the recourse of the Spanish state and church to blood was not merely a metaphor but reflected a new belief in intrinsic aspects of identity. Thus, the blood-purity laws have come to symbolize Europe's first foray into racial thinking. Yet, what scholars term "modern racism" depended on a number of other historical developments.