Tried asking this on the Reddit history pages, immediately removed for asking for a "basic fact", meanwhile sourcing is near impossible to find.
Ive been trying to find more sources on the origins of the racial identity construct, particularly in the development of widespread white supremacy, and how the "white" identity developed. In my research, it has seemed very clear that it developed in conjunction with the Catholic Church's rise to power at the continental scale. In this same location, fertile birthing grounds for settler-colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. Any recommended reading on the subject would be greatly appreciated.
Furthermore, as the title stated, I am looking for the earliest recorded instances of one peoples inflicting subhumanization behavior on another. Obviously conflict between different groups of people traces far back before recorded history, but I am very interested in finding when a group first identified as "pure" human, while declaring all those without said traits subhuman. I have a feeling there must be some Marxist text on this, so if anyone knows it I'd love to see it.
Selfish plug to the research I've done thus far if anyone wants to check it out
I was under the impression that modern "whiteness" was an Anglo protestant thing, because the "non-white" "white people" like Poles, Italians, Paddies, Slavs, Greeks, etc. were Catholic or Orthodox states.
Modern whiteness maybe, but that had to originate somewhere. I've been looking into the crusades and how they managed to recruit an army from various European peoples with lots of language that seemed to signify a collective white christian identity, though to what degree "white" had anything to do with it is still something I need to do more research on.
You are right of course, just wanted to chime in on this point because you mentioned white identity specifically in the post. I think White Identity is a "modern" Anglicized expression of the otherizing phenomena you are talking about.
I think a lot of ancient civilisations had an "us, civilised" vs "them, barbarians" distinction, which is a kind of subhumanisation. E.g the Chinese Hua-Yi distinction or the Greeks vs non-Greeks. Here's a chapter from Boletsi's book Barbarism and Its Discontents you might find interesting. It's about the history of the concept of barbarians in the West, from Ancient Greece to modern times.
I'm not sure how you'd go about finding the earliest one, and idk if it's even relevant to your topic tbh. Like, if the first recorded instance of people treating others as subhumans is in China in 1000BC, that has nothing to do with "white" identity, right?
You're right, and essentially what I'm trying to do is narrow down the differences in dehumanization in different societies at different times, just to have more background on dehumanization broadly so that I can safely zoom into the particular forms of it that came out of white christian Europe that shaped the very nature of European global interactions.
Very good point, do you have any literature on that subject?
The closest thing I can come up with is the sort of vague "Othering" that is found in the primary texts of Roman senators talking about the provincial people, especially those not in the empire as uncivilized barbarians. I forget whether it's Pliny the Elder or someone else, but I would start there. I dunno if it meets the criteria of "subhumanisation" since I never read it, if I had to guess though it probably existed in small instances for all of human history but never caught on until it was institutionalised with race science and racism in general. Another possibility is that women were the first to get the subhuman treatment since they were at the very least seen as nothing more than children since antiquity, so I wouldn't be surprised if that veered into dehumanisation.
there was also a disdain for the 'decadent' eastern cultures, primarily syrians and monotheists, in rome as well.
Interesting, I wonder how this links up with the Marxist idea that patriarchy emerged along with wealth surpluses to create hereditary inheritence and built upon a biological division of labour (i.e. people with wombs and those without)
I think it actually goes back to the Neolithic Revolution, and I’ve been looking for a good book on this subject, if anyone wants to suggest one.
I'll look through some of my books today, but you'd be hard pressed to find any basic civilization without slave labor, going back to even 5,000-6,000 B.C.E.
There's certainly been slave labor for quite some time, perhaps even before recorded history. But I think there's a key distinction in that slavery based on perceived race and "subhuman-ness" is a relatively recent phenomenon from what I've seen. The interesting part is that many europeans of different culture and peoples suddenly gained a shared "white" identity, one that may have coincided with gaining a shared "christian" identity.
It's really not. Slavery at least as far back as Aristotle has had justifications based on the animal nature of slaves. This involves things like saying that some people are natural slaves to be ruled (dominant form of rationalizing slavery and anti-democracy in the west for 2.5 thousand years at this point). What makes up a natural slave changes over time though according to cultural and material conditions.
Marx is in this tradition too, just his natural slaves are mechanical machines, and all people are free beings. That's one of the libratory aspects of industrialization.
i mean there is strong evidence that we wiped out the denisovans and neanderthals
I don't have an answer but I have been meaning to grab a copy of Gerald Horne's book The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century. I've heard him on a couple podcasts and a big part of the book is the creation of an inclusive "whiteness" beyond specific European ethnicities.
That sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. Thanks for the recommendation comrade!
No! It probably isn't going to go too much into the first instances of othering people but it's the most relevant to our current conditions. From what I've heard from Horne though it sounds dope. This dude cranks out Marxist history books like a machine, a lot of his stuff sounds interesting as fuck.
Yeah I meant its exactly what I'm looking for only in that its the second half of exactly what I'm trying to fully piece together. The origins of whiteness and if mass-scale racial subhumanization really did originate with the "white" identity is what I wish to find out, which would be extremely interesting in connecting all the dots in capitalism, settler-colonialism, white christian supremacy, racism, etc.
I would argue that any slave society has to necessarily view certain groups as subhuman, as it is an obvious moral fact that people who you see as equal to you should not be enslaved. The ancient Assyrian empire collapsed around 600 BCE, but at its high point they had tons of slaves and were known for being particularly harsh to their subjects. So, there are definitely examples of something like modern racism long before the start of Christianity.
IMO "whiteness" is just one example of hierarchy, and to a historian a few couple thousand years from now settler colonialism might not seem different than, for example, how the oppressive ancient Assyrian empire treated its subjects.
Have you tried r/AskHistorians? Most of the other history subs are cringy chud centrals.
They deleted the thread because it was apparently a "basic fact" and they don't allow questions about those? It was really weird.
Huh, I've never seen them turn away a question that wasn't about really basic stuff. Weird.
Yeah I found it pretty strange too, who knows, Reddit mods be Reddit mods 🤷♂️
Historically many groups had belief systems that extended personhood to non-human subjects.
You should work the Doctrine of Discovery somewhere, it seems very relevant to demonstrating a connection between the Catholic Church and colonialism.
Also maybe write a bit about Japan, who IMO tried to do Western imperialism as a non-Western people in the early 20th century,
Thanks for the link! I guess in all I haven't seen many marxist takes on the Catholic Church as an entity historically, and really that would be exactly what I'm looking for. Catholic history is a little more difficult than I initially thought it would be to research materially.
Well, I know that the names for people groups often translate to "the people." I've always kind of assumed that this implies that they're the real people and others aren't, but this isn't my field and I may be way off base. Can anyone chime in?
That may be true, but then the question becomes whether or not that when that "people" meets another, do they interact as human to human or is one people treating the other as another species/'subhuman'. Which I guess requires first a concept of what "human" is for a given people.
