This Is Not Middle-Earth: De-Grouping "Races" in Sociological Narratives of Transatlantic Slavery and of the Colonization of the Americas

Luisa Farah Schwartzman, University of Toronto

This paper makes sense of the historiography of colonization and slavery of the Americas that was produced over the last twenty years through the lens of sociological theories of categorization and group-making, as well as through the lens of postcolonial theory, to challenge predominant narratives that are common among diverse sets of literatures, including those of critical race theories that have become influential in Sociology. Historiography suggests that we look at colonialism and slavery in the Americas not as a struggle between "whites/Europeans", "blacks/Africans" and "Indigenous peoples," but as a context that generated these categories in the course of 400 years, and where these categories have remained complicated and contested in much of the hemisphere. By de-grouping "race," we can begin to understand the colonial Americas and the Africa of the slave trade as a places where European dominance was, initially, far from taken-for-granted, and where much of the colonial enterprise happened through involvement of different and mutually conflicting European states in conflicts and trade relations among different Indigenous and African states, in a competition with the Islamic world for the mediation of commerce between the Asia and the West. Whiteness and European power only fully consolidated in the Americas and Africa in 19th century, as Europeans/whites consolidated their political and territorial control in these two continents, and explicitly adopted a racial(ist) organization of society. The paper argues that, while critical race theories may work well to explain what happened in North America from the 19th century onward, their assumptions about the genesis of colonialism and slavery reinforces a Eurocentric (and Euro-descendant-centric) narrative that overstates European power before the initial period, gives little agency to non-Europeans (and those of non-European descent), and may perform less well to explain how racialization and associated inequalities developed outside of North America.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 214. International Narratives of Slavery