Last Thursday, the EU Center’s 14th Illinois EU Studies Conference (“Paradigms of Racialization: Alternative Sources”) began with a panel of four presentations on primary sources that shed light on the question of race and racialization during the medieval and early modern periods.
The first presenter, Brian Sandberg, a professor of history at Northern Illinois University, sought to historicize Islamophobia in France and the Mediterranean world by looking at practices of racism in the early modern period, specifically towards Moors and Turks. Written sources from 1550 to 1650 show that “Moors” and “Turks” were commonly used as interchangeable terms that were increasingly racialized (“rascals,” “barbarous dogs,” “infidels” of a “vile race”). Works of art from this period similarly depict the North African coast as a dangerous and violent source of piracy. Sandberg cited Aert Anthonisz’s 1615 painting “A French Ship and Barbary Pirates,” which shows a French ship under attack by galleys decorated with crescents, and the Monument of the Four Moors, executed in 1622-1626. The monument depicts Ferdinando I de’ Medici in military armor, standing above four chained men, whose likenesses, according to the art historian Mark Rosen, were taken from enslaved North Africans in Livorno. By considering these visual sources from Marseille and Livorno, Sandberg concluded, it is possible to get a sense of racialization and racism in the pre-modern period and see that racism far predates the scientific racism of the nineteenth century.
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| Monument of the Four Moors. Photo courtesy of Giovanni Dall'Orto (Wikicommons) |
Said Bousbina, an independent researcher, and Mauro Nobili, an associate professor of history at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, next gave a joint presentation focusing on a royal statement issued by Ahmad al-Mansur to inform the people of Fez of Morocco’s conquest of the
bilad al-sudan (“the land of blacks”) at the end of the sixteenth century. Bousbina and Nobili argued that the text shows how Ahmad al-Mansur used race to justify his conquest of the Songhay Empire, a West African polity with a Muslim majority, to the ulama, who were skeptical of the legality of the invasion. The statement claims the superiority of Islam over other religions, of the Saadi dynasty over other dynasties, and of the Saadi over their enemies. References to blackness and darkness in contrast to clarity and light are omnipresent in the text, Bousbina and Nobili noted, citing as an example the following excerpt: “God allowed the white swords of our Saadian army to subdue our yellow enemies [
sufriyya] and our black slaves [
abid sudaniyya] and allowed the lights of our caliphate to pierce the black darkness [
dujna sawda] that reigned in the south.”
In the third presentation, Cord J. Whitaker, an associate professor of English at Wellesley College, drew on “The King of Tars” and “Ywain and Gawain” in making the case for medieval romances as useful sources for critical race studies. “The King of Tars” tells the story of a pagan sultan of Damascus whose black skin turns white after he converts to Christianity. In “Ywain and Gawain,” Ywain, a Knight of the Round Table, is advised by his friend Gawain to leave the comfort of his home and wife in search of honor. Whitaker gave several reasons for why medieval romances deserve to be studied in the context of modern race studies. They are meant to produce strong emotional and affective responses, which can be used to reconstruct the worldview of their readers. Medieval romances also function as a way to discuss the indiscussible, revealing the cultural fantasies of medieval Europeans. Third, in both medieval romances and modern race studies, scholars can observe a dynamic negotiation between self and other. Lastly, Whitaker noted, studying medieval romances allows one to explore psychic pain that is similar to the modern experience of race.
The panel’s final presentation, “Whiteness from Below: Tattooed Servants, Soldiers, and Sailors in the British Atlantic World, c. 1680 to 1750,” was given by Craig Koslofsky, a professor of history at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Koslofsky contextualized the various forms of tattooing within the broader set of early modern dermal marking practices and argued that the voluntary self-tattooing of indentured servants acted as an expression of the hope of self-ownership. The tattooing of one’s initials on one’s arm, wrist, or hand staked a claim to self-ownership and helped preserve one’s identity. When the tattoo included the servant’s birth year or the year of the start of the indenture, the marks also served a practical record-keeping purpose by allowing a servant to show proof that the term of indenture was to end in x number of years. This self-tattooing, Koslofsky posited, can be seen as a claim of whiteness from below, because it operated in direct contrast to the branding of enslaved Africans, typically with the initials of their owner, in which case the dermal mark signified perpetual servitude and status as chattel owned by another person.
Organized by Claire Bourhis Mariotti, Markian Dobczansky, Heather Duncan, Mauro Nobili, and Amanda Smith, this conference was part of a multi-year project aimed at testing the assumptions of Critical Race Theory within the multiracial and multicultural context of the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds, from the medieval period to contemporary times. Funding for the project came from the Albertine Foundation’s Transatlantic Research Partnership grant. Recordings of most of the presentations from the conference will be posted to the EU Center’s
YouTube channel.
14th Illinois EU Studies Conference Panel Recap: "Alternative Sources from the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds"
_-_Foto_Giovanni_Dall'Orto,_13-4-2006_01.jpeg)
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