Stamped from the Beginning: Chapter 2: Origins of Racist Ideas Summary & Analysis

In 1415, Prince Henry of Portugal led the capture of a Ceuta, a key Muslim trading site in northeastern Morocco. From there, Henry embarked on a colonization and slave trading mission across West Africa. In 1453, Gomes Earnes de Zurara published a book about Henry’s life and work, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, which began “the recorded history of anti-Black racist ideas.” Portuguese forces were the first Europeans to ship enslaved Africans to Europe. The Portuguese were also selling Slavic people in large numbers; this is why the word “slave” is actually taken from “Slav.” Yet by the mid 1400s, trading of Slavic people gave way to that of Africans, and “Western Europeans began to see the natural Slav(e) not as White, but Black.”

Zurara’s Chronicle describes a slave auction that Prince Henry oversaw in 1444. The enslaved people were ethnically diverse—with some light-skinned and some dark-skinned—but Zurara collectively characterized them as “one inferior people.” Zurara described Africans as uncivilized, immoral, and in need of “salvation.” This created the impression that Henry’s enslaving mission was an act of moral rescue, rather than an enterprise motivated by profit. As the Portuguese slave trade grew, Zurara’s ideas about Africans became widespread. In 1492, Prince Henry’s great-niece Queen Isabel of Spain sponsored a journey headed by an explorer from Genoa, Christopher Columbus. Setting off for Asia, Columbus’s fleet accidentally encountered other lands: the islands now known as the Bahamas and Cuba.

Spanish colonizers called the indigenous people they encountered in the Americas “negros da terra” (Blacks from the land) and immediately subjected them to an enormous campaign of enslavement and genocide. In 1502, the first ship carrying enslaved Africans to the Americas arrived in Hispaniola. Aboard this ship was Bartolomé de Las Casas, an 18-year-old son of a Spanish merchant who soon became the first priest to be ordained in the Americas. Influenced by a group of abolitionist Dominican Friars, Las Casas dedicated himself to easing indigenous people’s suffering, but he did so by importing enslaved Africans to perform labor in the colonies. He argued that whereas indigenous Americans were weak, Africans were strong and naturally suited to hard labor—racist ideas that would endure for many years to come.

Las Casas’ ideas gradually gained popularity, and he recorded them in A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542). However, he later published another book, History of the Indies (1561), in which he expressed regret over recommending the import of enslaved Africans, a practice he eventually came to view as un-Christian. At this point, though, it was too late. After his death, Las Casas was denounced as an extremist radical due to his anti-slavery views.

In 1510, a highly educated Moroccan named Al-Hasan Ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi was captured and enslaved during a diplomatic mission. He was brought to Pope Leo X, who freed him, converted him to Christianity, and gave him the name Johannes Leo, although he came to be known as Leo Africanus (Leo the African). In 1526, he published the first “scholarly survey” of Africa available in Europe—Della descrittione dell’Africa (Description of Africa). Leo Africanus described Africans as savage, immoral, and sexually devious. In doing so, he became one of the first people to demonstrate that anyone—no matter their race or ethnicity—can produce and consume racist ideas.

By the mid 1550s, the British had grown determined to outpace Portugal’s participation in slave trading. In the ensuing decades, the genre of English-language travel writing began solidifying new ideas about race.