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American Historical Association.
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http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1997/9705/9705TEC.CFM
From the Teaching
column in the May-June 1997 Perspectives
Problems in Studying the Role
of Blacks In Europe
Allison Blakeley
There is a risk in asking 20th-century
questions of earlier times because today's terms of discourse may not find
a meaningful context there. It is likewise problematic to project onto
European history social and cultural constructs that have evolved in the
United States, and perhaps nowhere else, in quite the same form. Such is
the dilemma we face in considering the influence of blacks in European
history for a primarily American audience.
A discussion of the influence
of black Africans on Europe and on Europeans is complicated by the absence
of a universal definition of black. In general, the designation black in
Europe, unlike in the United States, has been reserved for those of dark
color, not the broader definition based on known black African ancestry.
Consequently, awareness of a black population in Europe has been limited
by the fact that when interracial marriage occurred, subsequent light-complexioned
generations might never be referred to again as black. Hence the debate
over whether Alexandre Dumas père, who had African ancestry through
his paternal grandmother, was black. Consistent with the predominant European
attitude, he emphatically rejected the notion that he was. Besides, in
his France-as in all the other European societies-class was far more important
than color, at least until the 20th century. The great Russian poet, Alexander
Pushkin, who took pride in his African ancestry, shrugged off aspersions
cast on that score, but took great offense at those who did not respect
the centuries of nobility on his father's side.
Is it legitimate, therefore,
for a historian to count these two 19th-century literary giants as evidence
of an African influence? Has racial thought in Europe had the same degree
of significance as in the United States? Have blacks in Europe experienced
a kind of positive "invisibility" in contrast to the destructive American
type chronicled by Ralph Ellison? On the surface the European racial definition
seems more egalitarian. However, the history in question suggests also
the possibility of an attempt to ignore or minimize the influence of a
group considered sufficiently undesirable to have been excluded by law
from European countries at various times. For teachers and students of
history a resultant practical problem is the absence of clear references
to race in documents such as census data where it might be quite useful.
Moreover, among scholars, few have found the experience of blacks in Europe
to merit special attention; and even those few of African descent who have
achieved high status have done so by following the accepted conventions
and by avoiding drawing attention to either their African heritage or to
African characteristics in their societies. This has been left to blacks
in former colonies, not in Europe. The remainder of this brief essay by
one such outsider uses selected examples from continental European societies
to discuss some of the other issues that must be confronted in studying
the influence of Africa and Africans on continental Europe.
Africa and Africans have
had an influence on European thought and culture far disproportionate to
the size of the small black population (which, for example, approached
150,000 in the Iberian peninsula in the 16th century, and by the 18th amounted
to just several thousand in France, a few thousand in the Netherlands,
and several hundred scattered through Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia;
only in the 20th century would the combined numbers reach the hundreds
of thousands). The most striking example of that disproportionate influence
can be seen in the 20th century, in Soviet Russia, which as part of its
messianic role chose Black Africa and blacks in America as symbols for
the Communist championing of the downtrodden; elected blacks as honorary
members of the Moscow City Council; and named a mountain after Paul Robeson.
A strong case can also be made that blacks have had influence in and on
Europe primarily as symbols of European achievement, rather than in their
own right. A graphic example was the curious widespread use of "Moors'
heads" in the coats of arms of hundreds of European towns and families
in medieval and early modern Europe. European attitudes about Africa and
Africans have played a significant role in helping Europeans to define
themselves.
For purposes of this discussion,
it will be useful to begin with a look at how leading European thinkers
framed the main questions involved here. Immanuel Kant, an Enlightenment
luminary, wrote in his "Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
Sublime":
The Negroes of Africa have
by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling. Mr. [David] Hume challenges
anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and
asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported
elsewhere from their countries, although many of them have even been set
free, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great
in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality, even though among
the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble and through
superior gifts earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference
between these two races of man.
Kant's essay is his global
inventory of all the world's cultures, which concludes that Europeans surpass
nearly all of the others in most regards. Thus Africans, who rank among
the lowest in his mind, help to define what he terms the European character.
His conclusions also suggest how difficult it would be for him to accept
any notion of a positive influence by blacks.
It should be obvious that
Mr. Hume, the devout empiricist, was in this instance not very empirical
at all. For his part, Kant never traveled farther than 100 miles from his
native home in Königsberg on the Baltic Sea during his entire 80 years
of life. Johann Herder, one of Kant's best university students there, articulated
even more clearly what it would have taken for blacks to impress those
who accepted the Hume-Kant assessment, when in his own Outlines of a
Philosophy of the History of Man he wrote: "The Negro has ... never
once conceived the design of improving or of conquering Europe." It should
be noted that there was opposing Enlightenment opinion on the subject,
which offers an alternative explanation for limits to lofty black achievement.
The Abbé Raynal, one of the most prolific philosophe writers, wrote
that blacks only appeared to be inferior because of the circumstances that
had been forced upon them. However, it was Kant's evaluation of the ability
of blacks that was the predominant view among the leading Enlightenment
thinkers and has prevailed in European thought ever since. This remained
true even though Kant himself eventually arrived at a more positive assessment
of blacks and blackness in his later philosophical reflections. How does
a history teacher, who perhaps has just in an earlier lesson impressed
upon students how important an intellectual figure Immanuel Kant is, now
persuade these same students that even they can correct Kant on this particular
subject? One possible way is to simply use him as an example of how even
powerful intellectuals are still human beings, and can be wrong.
Kant's sentiments appear
all the more arrogant in light of three interesting examples of blacks
with distinguished careers in nearby Germany, Russia, and the Netherlands.
The saga of Anthony William Amo should have been familiar to Kant because
Amo gained fame in Germany for his philosophical studies. Born on the Gold
Coast around 1700, he was taken to Amsterdam by the West India Company
when he was about 10 years old and was presented to the Duke of Wolfenbüttel.
He was baptized in Wolfenbüttel in 1707 and given the names Anton
and Wilhelm in honor of the reigning duke and his son. A grant from the
duke allowed Amo to be educated to a point where he was able to enter the
universities at Halle, in 1727, and Wittenberg, in 1730, where he became
skilled in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, German, and Dutch and concentrated
on philosophy. In 1734 he was awarded the doctorate degree from the University
of Wittenberg with a dissertation on "De humanae mentis apatheia"
("On Apathy in the Human Mind"). In his philosophical work he was a rationalist,
devoting special attention to mathematical and medical knowledge in the
context of Enlightenment thought. He became a lecturer at the University
of Halle and later at the University of Jena until the 1750s.
Among the few fairly prominent
black figures in Dutch history who at least briefly caught the public eye,
the earliest was the former slave Jacobus Capitein, so named because a
Dutch captain brought him to Leiden, where he was put into school, mastered
several European languages, and eventually became a predicant after completing
theological training at the University of Leiden in 1742. He became famous
as author of a treatise that defended slavery as an avenue to redemption
for Africans. His portrait, usually accompanied by didactic poetry, circulated
widely, advertising that blacks could be transformed by Christianity and
Western civilization. Prior to going off to what was to prove a disastrous
mission in his homeland on the Gold Coast, he preached a number of times
in Holland to audiences who flocked to see this novelty.
The first black to attain
high recognition in Russia was Abram Hannibal, the African slave who became
a favorite of Tsar Peter the Great and was the maternal great-grandfather
of Pushkin, the single most revered figure in all of Russian culture. Brought
to Russia at the beginning of the 18th century as part of a group of young
black prospective servants, Hannibal, under the tsar's sponsorship, went
on to attain a high level of education in France and, after returning to
Russia, eventually advanced to the rank of major general in the army engineers.
He brought back to Russia a personal library of 400 books, one of the largest
and most up-to-date in the empire, and himself published a two-volume compilation
on geometry and construction techniques. The owner of several estates,
complete with serf labor, he served from 1743 to 1751 as Commandant of
the city of Reval on the Baltic, not far from Kant's Königsberg. He
later directed major canal and other construction projects.
The cases of Hannibal, Amo,
and Capitein are particularly germane to the present discussion because
there is correspondence showing that their patrons deliberately supported
their development as Enlightenment experiments to determine whether blacks
could be formally educated to excel in European arts and sciences. How
then do we explain the virulence of the negative assessment of the abilities
of blacks by some of the most respected thinkers in Western civilization,
an assessment still invoked in the late 20th century by those seeking to
legitimize theories asserting black inferiority? A closer consideration
of the historical background of the Kantian view can clarify the limitations
on African influences on Europe and provide some further direction for
teachers.
The first point that should
be noted is that Kant was not basing his evaluation on the historical experience
of blacks in Europe. There had been blacks who had achieved distinction
as early as Moorish Iberia, and later in Spain and Portugal, the European
societies that first saw a large influx of blacks. Most of these notables
were mulattos: for example, Cristóbol de Meneses, a Dominican priest;
the painters Juan de Pareja and Sebastian Gomez; and Leonardo Ortiz, a
lawyer. Among the few dark-skinned blacks who achieved high status was
Juan Latino, a slave from Africa who through his master's benevolence was
educated at the University of Granada. There were also some other signs
of respect for blacks during these centuries. In 1306 an Ethiopian delegation
came to Europe to seek an alliance with the "King of the Spains" against
the Moslems. King Anfós IV of Aragon considered arranging a double
marriage with the Negus of Ethiopia in 1428. And the Portuguese sent Pedro
de Corvilhao to Ethiopia in 1487 on a similar mission.
Meanwhile the actual living
experience of blacks in Europe appeared to be marked by smooth integration
into European society, with the role of lower-class blacks determined very
much by that of their masters or employers. The 140,000 slaves imported
into Europe from Africa between 1450 and 1505 were a welcome new labor
force in the wake of the Bubonic Plague. On the whole, the blacks in Christian
Iberia were not limited to servile roles; but they were also not influential
as a group. The new slave population in Portugal worked in agriculture
and fishing. Free blacks living in Loulé and Lagos in the southern
edge of Portugal owned houses and worked as day laborers, midwives, bakers,
and servants. Most were domestic servants, laborers (including those on
ships and river craft), and petty tradesmen. Some free blacks, especially
women, became innkeepers. Blacks in Spain served as stevedores, factory
workers, farm laborers, footmen, coachmen, and butlers. Male and female
domestics apparently lived well compared to other lower-class people. Slaves
could work in all the crafts, but could not join the guilds. A few Africans
active in the Americas during the early Iberian expansion were among returnees
to Portugal and Spain from America and Africa from the 16th to the 18th
centuries. These included free mulatto students, clerics, free and slave
household servants, sailors, and some who attained gentlemen's status.
The use of many black women slaves as domestics and concubines led to mulatto
offspring who received favored treatment, and in some instances, attained
middle-class and even aristocratic status.
In surveying the later experience
of blacks in the northern, central, and eastern European societies, there
is a striking similarity to the patterns in Iberia, but with smaller populations
before the 20th century. In those societies it became fashionable for the
wealthy to employ blacks as decorative house servants and in ceremonial
roles such as military musicians. The Dutch entry into the African slave
trade, beginning in the 17th century and eventually accounting for the
removal of about half a million Africans to the Americas, magnified the
image of blacks as a servile race in Dutch society. This was one of the
factors reinforcing a low esteem for blacks in other parts of Europe as
well by the 18th century.
The basis for denigration
of blacks must also be sought, however, in underlying notions within European
cultures. Images of blacks and attitudes about blacks were present in Europe
long before there was a significant physical presence. In visual arts,
religion, epics, and legends, the Middle Ages provide a fascinating array
of vivid illustrations of this point. There is a persistent pattern of
ambivalence in the attitudes of white Europeans toward blacks that has
survived over the centuries, always containing both positive and negative
features, but usually tilting toward the latter. Imagery based upon religious
themes illustrates especially well the ambivalence in question. Black saints
were proclaimed in parts of medieval Europe when the Holy Roman Emperors,
beginning with Charles IV's ascension in 1346, adopted blacks into the
iconography of their realm. The statue of St. Maurice in the chapel of
St. Kilian at Magdeburg and the 17th-century bust and older relics of St.
Gregory the Moor at the church of St. Gereon in Cologne testify to the
strength of these notions. This special recognition aimed not only to acknowledge
the contribution of African martyrs to the Christian cause, but also to
amplify the scope of the German emperor's realm and affirm the relevance
of Christianity to all peoples.
Yet even some of the most
beautiful art depicting blacks had darker undertones. The Adoration of
the Magi was the single most popular religious theme featuring blacks in
European art. The black king, handsome with noble bearing, was usually
depicted as the youngest, presumably symbolizing Africa as the continent
just beginning to participate in world affairs. This hint at backwardness
is of course the negative aspect. Another biblical theme with a similarly
ambiguous message was that surrounding the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch,
described in a passage of the Book of Acts. Although this may be interpreted
as celebrating a missionary role for Christianity, it also implies European
cultural superiority. Moreover, this theme becomes even more negative when
it is associated with a popular symbol derived from a passage in the Old
Testament Book of Jeremiah, where the impossibility of an Ethiopian changing
his color is mentioned in a discussion of sin and punishment (Jeremiah
13: 22-25). In the emblematic tradition widely published in western Europe
during the early modern period, a "washed Moor" was the symbol for futility.
An even older and better
known religious theme bearing a negative connotation for blacks was that
concerning the Hamitic legend. The convergence of this legend (as well
as that on the Ethiopian baptism) with the historic advent of the African
slave trade represents just the type of historical fusion that can help
explain the depth of modern racism's roots: that is, myth seemingly confirmed
by experience. Other imagery concerning blacks drawn more from the historical
experience than from imagination might be cited from epics, legends, and
literature. An illustrative medieval literary work is Wolfram von Eschenbach's
Parzifal,
drawn from the legend of King Arthur and his court, which evolved for centuries
in England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The images of the blacks
in the story are at times positive and at others negative, sometimes noble,
at others ridiculous. Also, precursing a familiar theme of the present
day, the males have uncontrollable sexual appetites. The depiction of blacks
as tormentors and sexual symbols was also popular. Among Satan's titles
in literature and folklore were "black knight," "black man," "big Negro,"
"black Jehovah," and "black Ethiopian." Such figures as Ruprecht and Black
Pete (Zwarte Piet), the sometimes benevolent bogeymen who accompany
the Saint Nicholas figure in the Christmas celebrations in Germany and
the Netherlands, show that the ambivalence persists.
In the 19th and 20th centuries
the apparent assumed inferiority of blacks would become cloaked in supposedly
scientific racist theories, such as those of Joseph Gobineau and Adolph
Hitler, which consciously echoed the earlier language of Kant. Reservations
about the character of blacks, even when not spoken, have been among the
reasons for limiting entry of blacks into Europe and for opposing racial
mixture. On the other hand, this low opinion has only added to the popularity
of blacks as symbols, because the commercial use of blacks as symbols tended
to reinforce their dehumanization. In the course of the 19th century, industries
throughout the Western world began to adopt trademarks featuring blacks;
for example, those for tobacco products, cleansers, coffee, liquor, rice,
shoe and metal polish, and toothpaste. Those for raw materials and foods
were especially prominent. These trademarks were additional embellishment
of imagery already manifested in the popular culture in literature, song,
and story. This seems to reflect an association of blacks with the primitive
and often with the sensuous. Similar attitudes can also be seen in the
appreciation of blacks as athletes and entertainers. The ambivalence of
Europeans, like their white American counterparts, toward equal acceptance
of blacks in major sports and the exploitation of jazz music in the 20th
century are good examples. Thus, deeply embedded stereotypes have continued
to overshadow the real role of blacks in European history and culture.
How does a teacher end a
course on such a gloomy note without leaving the serious student with a
sense of despair? How should an instructor respond to the skeptical white
student who suspects that the black professor has biased the selection
of information in order to make a point; or to the embarrassed black student
who believes the professor is dredging up dated, sordid history that is
better left forgotten? One approach is to admit to the first that there
are also negative stereotypes about whites; but they are surrounded by
enough positive images to leave a more balanced perspective. For both students'
objections, resort to a medical school analogy can be useful: examination
of a diseased cadaver has great value despite all the difficulties of stomaching
it, just as the history of racism must be confronted before it can be properly
addressed in the present. It might also be added that what is learned in
this examination may be instructive concerning other forms of social bias,
beyond that involving blacks and beyond Europe.
—Allison Blakely, professor
of European and comparative history at Howard University, is the author
of Blacks in the Dutch World (Indiana University Press, 1994) and Russia
and the Negro (Howard University Press, 1986).
Copyright © American
Historical Association.
http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1997/9705/9705TEC.CFM
on November 12, 2005.
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