Stamped from the Beginning: Chapter 1: Human Hierarchy Summary & Analysis

The Great Hurricane of 1635 wreaks havoc on the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritan minister Richard Mather is aboard the James, a ship that seems destined to be destroyed by the storm. However, the ship miraculously swerves around a dangerous rock, and the passengers arrive in Boston safely, which Richard credits as an act of God. Richard faced persecution in England; in America, he reunites with John Cotton, a fellow Puritan minister. Together, the men lay out a plan for life in New England. Mather is involved with the establishment of Harvard, the first college in colonial America, which is modelled after the University of Cambridge.

Influenced by the study of Ancient Greek philosophy, the New England Puritans developed a hierarchical view of different people groups, claiming that Native Americans, Africans, and Anglicans are all inferior to them. Aristotle theorized that Africans were “ugly” and natural slaves because the hot climate in Africa had a corrupting effect on them; ideas like this were used to justify slavery in the ancient world. Once Christianity emerged, early believers claimed that slavery was ordained by God, even as St. Paul asserted that all souls were equal in Jesus. The ancient world was filled with ethnic and faith-based prejudice, but racism did not exist because the concept of race (chiefly whiteness and Blackness) had not yet been invented.

Back in the 17th century, John Cotton writes the first constitution of New England and legalizes the purchase of enslaved people captured during war. At this point, both Africans and indigenous people are being enslaved in the Americas. Puritans are quick to justify the enslavement of “Negroes” using arguments that preexisted colonial America. These arguments originated back many centuries previously. In the 14th century, the scholar and explorer Ibn Battuta journeyed to Mali, a resource-rich, thriving intellectual hub, and was astonished by its peacefulness. Another prominent Muslim scholar, Ibn Khaldun, rebuked Battuta’s report, arguing that “Negroes” were like animals and naturally suited to enslavement. This is the “climate theory” of Black inferiority.

Ibn Khaldun believed that dark-skinned Africans could improve themselves by migrating North, which would mean that their descendants would eventually have paler skin and more European features. At this point, Muslim powers were trading both Africans and Slavic peoples as slaves, yet Khadun’s assimilationist helped shift the slave trade toward Africans only. Even before this, there had already been another argument framing Black people as natural slaves. For centuries, certain religious scholars had been arguing that Black people were the cursed descendants of Noah’s son Ham, a figure from the Book of Genesis. Khaldun found this idea “silly,” but the “curse theory” of Black inferiority gained significant power over time.