so nice be with you today to talk about this exciting book whose and why a hidden chapter from the 18th century invention race. this came out with harvard in 2022 and i love to get started

by asking you about the genesis of this project. how how did this project come about. well thanks it's kind of a long story and a story involves the most important kind of person in the project. and that's henry louis gates jr. apparently, he reading an earlier book that i wrote called the anatomy of blackness that mentioned this debate or this contest which took place at the bordeaux academy of sciences. and i'll get back to that second and at the same time, he was already thinking about doing a project this, and he just gave me a phone call out of the blue is an amazing day where he said, listen, i'm going to do a book and i'm going to call who's black and why about this contest? that took place at the bordeaux academy of sciences in 1741, and we worked on it very closely for two years, and it just came out in paperback, by the way. oh, exciting. that's fantastic. didn't know that. wonderful.

well, listen, so what i'd love to know is if you can give us a bit of background information on, the historical circumstances surrounding ending this essay, bring us back to france in the 1740s. what is happening in how can we understand the broader circumstances? how big is france? how how can we dive into this moment in time? well, there's a lot to cover. but let's start first with some demographics. a good question. france is a very, very big country in the 18th century. it's actually the third biggest country in the world, which hard to wow. yeah. would 25 million people at the time you think that england is about six or 7 million people and spain about the same thing. and here in north america there are a million people living along the east coast, not counting native americans. and that includes enslaved people as well. so really numbers are really

quite of of what's going to happen during the 18th century and i think when it gets bordeaux, which is the place that we'll be talking about quite a bit, some background is useful there to bordeaux is has is this academy in a scientific academy scientific academies rose up almost in opposition universities during the 18th century. the bordeaux academy of sciences was founded in 1713 by a group of, nobles and aristocrats and members of parliament. they met pretty much sunday for the next 90 years or so and or 80 years or so. and what's amazing about the scientific is that they got together bunch of gentlemen, naturalists, to consult with each other and think about the big questions of the day. and these questions were generally much more naturalistic than what was going on in

universities. as i said, universities were more like almost like vocational schools. the university of paris produced lawyers and theologians and doctors, etc. the various faculty did that, whereas the scientific academies would take up these questions. they were much more interested in interested in research and experimentation than what was going on in the universities or universities, replicated knowledge and academies were trying to create knowledge. and so it was that that these academicians would create these contests on an annual basis. and during the 1720s and 1730s they announced where they would give a pretty big cash prize of about 300 pounds a year each, each contest. and in 1739, they got the idea of reading the contest on the nature and the and the causes of black skin and textured african hair. and they sent it around in the greatest or the most popular

scientific journal of the time, the genealogy sabel all around europe. and they got six essays that came in in 1741, two years later. my goodness so so let's take a pause for a second. just understand bordeaux. so this location, bordeaux, what is about that city specifically? why this particular academy be asking this question about? black skin and hair. now, bordeaux during the 18th century was the second biggest city in it, had a population of about between, you know during the 18th century varied from about 85,000 to maybe 105,000 or something like that. and it as it became more and more popular, obviously, was a larger population and the bordeaux is slightly in the interior of france, but it's linked by the gowland river to

the atlantic. and so it was a very, very important port city. and we all think about bordeaux and bordeaux wine. bordeaux was exporting wine all over europe during the 18th century. it was making a lot of money on that, but it also had very, very ties with france's colonies. and we don't think too much about the french caribbean, except who were taking cruises. but france had some major overseas colonies. the 18th century in guadeloupe what we call saint kitts now, or saint christopher martinique. martinique was the most important island for a long time. and then saint-domingue, which is haiti and bordeaux, was not involved in the slave trade on the same level, say not, but it was certainly involved with the slave trade. it was making much money though, from wine, other forms of trade. it didn't really get involved in, the slave trade until now on a large scale, until later in the century so again, in terms

of the slave trade bordeaux certainly much important figure toward the end of the century, it was deporting three or 4000 africans to caribbean. at the end of was the 1789 1790, early on it was more like 500 or a thousand, but in total bordeaux deported. 150,000 africans to the new and some of the pacific colonies. well, so when you think about these numbers, again, asked about numbers, 150,000 people is, you know, one and a half times the total population in bordeaux. so bordeaux got involved. in this, you know, the 16, 17th century and, exported slaves into the 19th century. wow. so tell me if academicians took interest in this subject bordeaux is a slave trading

port, also a major port of trade? are there black people, bordeaux. yeah, i think that's one of the the hidden parts of this contest theoretically, this contest was a political it didn't really talk about the slave trade at all. it was what is the source of black skin and black hair. but anyone walking around bordeaux in the 18th century would have seen no especially down toward the port we've seen a handful of people working ships. the we estimate that there were probably 5000 people people of african descent that went through bordeaux during the 18th century. there might be two or 300. there are any given time, as i said, working in warehouses, working in ports or working as valet. sometimes captains or planters, rich planters. they're phenomenally rich, i think kind of silicon valley rich would come back to bordeaux and build fantasy stick townhouses and one of the things they could allow them to show

their wealth was having enslaved africans working for them. wow. so yes, there are a lot of africans or people of african descent, so-called creole africans, coming back to bordeaux from the from the caribbean. wow. and you also talk about this in the book. there are there some famous families who come through and are located there. right. the the family the haitian revolutionary toussaint louverture, you they come through with that, correct? yeah. that happens after the haitian revolution. it's actually quite interesting that that at that occurred because bordeaux was in such dire straits after the the revolution. so we're, you know, we cut now to 18 offerings, you know, 70 years after the contest, more or less at this point, the bordeaux's trade has plummeted because bordeaux owned more than half of the sugar plantations on. saint-domingue and haiti.

wow. so of its wealth was coming from that and not only from sugar but from the direct trade. so bordeaux is manufacturing guns and armaments, leather goods and tools and so on and so forth and. then colonial commodities were coming into the city. but yes, it's true that the the children of toussaint came to bordeaux himself, had already, by that time, sent off to a french prison to die in the early 19th century. wow. incredible to be layering on this part of the history of bordeaux to what what many of us already know and think about, which is wine to think of this is just such a port city and producer of goods that circulating in the colonial world and also where slavery, as you're saying, is a source ring of wealth and status. these families can. you know, that that they that

they have this wealth that they that they are part of this system. and so in that way that may have brought them to this interest. it's very interesting that step toward an involvement and wanting think about pose that question about black skin hair. yes we see this particularly in the art of time period. you can see if you go to the bordeaux museum of art, you can see occasionally in certain rooms you'll see portraits of rich bordeaux dignitaries. and some of them they have these these these black families with them or children raised almost like toys in some of these households. oh, wow. my goodness. yes, that is fascinating. and it brings me to another question which you're indicating here about racial thinking what is going on here? there's fascination. you're saying in all that is

evident in other domains in art history probably also colonial products of different sorts that provides this evidence that are thinking maybe in some way about race. yeah so question of race is at the of the contest. it's also at the heart of the book. during the 18th century we talk a lot about the invention of race, which is what part of this, the title of the book we the the idea that race actually being fabricated during the 18th century i think one of the great thing great kind of mysteries of our lives these days that we talk about race all the time but we don't know really where it came from. we're of assumed that the xenophobia and the abuses of the past have always been. and they have and there's always been of an intellectual infrastructure for that.

the notion race. but the notion of race way we understand it right now is something that about during the 18th century and this is actually a micro history and a macro history of that phenomenon. you think about it because you have a contest and a contest is not simply a contest. it is a science before academy or science in general claiming the right to to determine what exactly? each category human on the planet was worth and what its significance was. and what its origin was for the longest time, for the race didn't mean race in the same way we understand it. if you said the word race in 1720 or 1680, most people would say we think that, oh, maybe that person is talking about a race of dogs or races, horses or animals or possibly a race kings or race of nobles.

and so there is the idea of lineage and bloodline. but you never talked about groups of people as races the terms used for, say, the inhabitants. sub-saharan africa might be nations, peoples or as things became a bit closer to natural history and science, maybe varieties and the word varieties is a really interesting word. it's kind of closer to reality in some ways, because the word variety is a botanical term, which implies cross fertilization and whole of different possibilities and phenotypes, whereas the word race, a certain limited number of groups and lineages it's a it's a zoological. so you'll that the the contest ask for you know what is the source of race it's asking about skin is asking about hair but

it's really asking about something we're called what we would call race. now because it's it's science claiming the right to to do to say who people are. as i just said. now, there are a lot of things that we see in the essays which are emblematic of what happen farther in the century. it's really great because this is a almost like a focus group of race, if you want to call it that, because we're getting a cross section of what people are thinking. 1739 1740 and they send the essays. this is very different from, a more horizontal understanding of history where we look at the ideas of through time here we're talking about six people, theologians and climate theorists anatomists and people much more interested in the taxonomy, all supplying their own answers to this question.

well, yes, so, so let's let's talk about contest in more depth so. so what what again, was the exact wording of the question. yes. so this is important. what is the source of the degeneration of african skin and african hair? not all words, not simply what are the causes, but what is the degeneration. and here we get into something that's a little bit technical. so i why do it bring us into the technical okay. so for the longest time, as i said, this is a moment when science is claiming the right, but they're claiming the right from theology. from from religion and particularly catholicism and from christianity for the longest time, the jurisdiction the people had jurisdiction over the question of human categories were theologians or the church in general. and the one of the big sources

for this is, the old testament story of noah and his three sons. so noah, his ark lands presumably in the caucasus and is three kids are hanging out after. this is all over noah japheth and shem are hanging out and noah, a completely drunk and his two of his sons look away from his nakedness. and the third son ham happens to look at when he's drunk. and this is a bad idea because. when noah wakes up, he curses and in fact curses the descendants of him. and this is the curse of him, which marks him and makes his sons the the servants of servants. so here's this kind of a justification both for a mark, which is coloration and also the idea that people who are black might be slaves. now, this is really not said in the bible later, biblical exegesis will say this. but the good part of, the bible, the story is that people are

related. you think about it, there is one faith and there's one god and there's one people and the universe wisdom of christianity and catholicism such that they want to have this message for everybody, no matter what the colors are. and so this biblical idea infuses partially depends on who's talking, who's doing the thinking. fuzes with environmental climate theory of antiquity. so you get the bible on the one hand, and then climate theory. so people move and then they kind of change who who as the climate. now to get to the get to the head to to the contest, what happens is that? they did not want to come with a contest which encouraged people to to say that there are different species of people they didn't want to contradict the bible. so even though it's a scientific contest they said this is about degeneration and degeneration is a fancy word for saying that you have an original prototype race

of people wiped. paul, who moved the globe and then degenerated different climates. now we probably have heard the word degenerate, moral degenerate. it's the idea that there was something pure and original and then you become worse afterwards. so degeneration is a negative out of notion. so there's a built in that the winning essay for this contest will be somebody who says who explains how africans degenerated in the torrid zone or west africa. wow is so fascinating. so a way in which we see an an early but very clear of what we would call today white supremacy that whiteness is the supreme is the best and that anything else is is some layer or type of degeneration from from that

original and best being. i think that went without saying for this group of 40 members of the bordeaux academy of sciences, when they put this together, the idea that that the white, white people might say race. yeah, but it really essentially is function as a race. the white race was the first and the best wow, wow absolute fascinating that this happening already. so deep into the past. yes it's it's it's interesting how people responded to this question not. everybody, as you know, often is the case in such contest and people ask questions. they didn't answer the question correctly or in the same way that the bordeaux people were looking for. so there were generally five different tendencies. so i said, there are 16 essays that came from as far afield as sweden ireland and germany, a

lot from france, half were in french, half were in latin. wow. there were a number of kind of crazy religious explanations. and when i say crazy or crazy because they they were not related directly to the bible but somebody is own interpretation of the bible mixed in with a little bit of climate science or a little of the anatomy, but the religious some of the religious ideas, which are actually quite included, the idea that maybe there was a black adam to begin with, maybe god was disappointed with africans and made them mark them for their sins. moral perversity, maybe blackness was a gift from to protect people from the sun. there are a lot of religious explanations that were actually submitted and that's one of the categories is sort of the religious arts the religious approach answering that question, even though you're saying a lot of those explanations were highly

speculative, imaginative and very, very personal interpretations of of sacred texts. yeah. and i think it's important to note that the people who did this were not interested africans. they were interested in preserving the jurisdiction of religion over the question humankind. that's i think we talk about the 18 century as being an antwerp centric century, the century of humanism, where people start concentrating much up on the human turning their backs on scripture, turning their backs on received ideas, starting to concentrate on people themselves. you know, alexander pope said the proper study of mankind is, man, this is the idea. these people who are sending in the religious explanations didn't want that to happen. so that's the first category. and i suspect the the academy just dumped those explanations. in the archives. you can see they would say now excluded from the context.

wow. so are they. did they annotate the essay then or they take their own notes that would say no, not this one. i of found the precede things for when they were trying to decide by the contest there was such chicken scratch. i couldn't understand a word thing and it sounded my heart leapt. i said, i'm going to find out exactly what, but it was actually legible. the secretary during this time was a notorious bad secretary, probably rinker, because it was really he kept terrible records before this contest and after it's much better but 1740 941 was a tough year for this. okay, well, i digress. i meant to tell you about some of the other tendencies. yes. let's talk about another tendency, please so there a lot of environmental explanations as well or climatological as we might say these days. people, as i said, were looking back to the past for explanations about why people would look the way they looked

and they look back to the father of many ideas there are still circulating during the 18th century, and that's hypocrisies. these ideas there's a whole different range of them that explain the fact that contend or attempt explain the fact that skin color humors, the hair, everything that comes from to the climate. they're really not using the word degeneration because looking back to antiquity in a kind of a different way. okay. the third tendency is a genealogical tendency, and this one is super interesting because it this is a moment when natural history changes. now, we think about natural history. we think about the study birds and plants and animals and, so on and so forth. but for the longest time didn't have a history. it was seen as static. the earth was supposedly or invented, created 6000 years

before god made everything in seven days. and that's the end of the story this exactly what you would see at the creation is it museum here in the united states things haven't changed a genealogy logical explanation for humankind actually attacks notion by saying humans can change over time. now it's partially compatible with the idea of, you know, ham's or the three sons of noah kind of changing time. yes, but a real genealogical, biological explanation doesn't talk about doesn't talk about nature, really talks about the fact that climate change people, both on the level skin, but anatomically physiologically it's a much more in-depth photo, scientific understanding of dynamic change over time. and that's very scary to religious thinkers because that was steel's creation from god and puts it in the hand nature during the 18th century. so there are a number of story

and a number of explanations that are genealogical notion in nature and do overlap with the idea degeneration degenerate skin can be kind of neutral, just color the brains are the same. everything's the same. or degeneration can really talk about substantive changes, which mean that there's a hierarchy in humans. and that's something we will get back to a second in the next tendency and that we see in these essays is anatomical. and this is something that's really overlooked, i think, by a lot of historians. the anatomical understanding of africans in particular i should probably say that if people had been literally colorblind. i think the notion of race would not of evolved from variety. and so the notion of race wouldn't have existed in the same way. maybe the notion of varieties would have just the same. yes, but something the science or the proto science of anatomy was really important in making this this shift occur.

and among the essays, there is a one there are several mentions of different kind of anatomical structures associated with africans, particular during the 18th century. but there's one in particular that comes from a doctor named barrier, beira, who is surgeon who is from pepino, who goes to cayenne which is a was an island next to the french guiana and he is a surgeon on plantations and he dissects a number of enslaved africans. oh, wow. and for this essay, the bordeaux academy, he says that i have discovered the existence of black blood and black bile. you saying there's an element, a an elemental difference between africans and white people. so this is a credible coloring skin. and this sets. off one of the encourages and to a really important line of

thinking during the 18th century where people are starting to talk about race on inside, not just the outside for the longest this was just color. and as soon as you start thinking about race as being associated with, you know, as i said, blood bile and then brains pineal, glands and even --, where we're talking about something that's quite different, race being imprinted a hereditary part of of humans in a way very, very different from the that a kind of a soft degeneration might be interpreted. so the anatomical side is very important. and i add a footnote here that this guy by half, pierre barriere pierre mcgrath, published is his essay and. this becomes incredibly important throughout the 18th century. it's cited by a lot people. it's republished, it's cited in diderot's encyclopedia. it is part and parcel of thomas jefferson's notes on the state of virginia as well this idea

becomes very important that there's something elemental and different about africans. and i think that it's related to the final thing that we see the final tendency in these and that's the taxonomic possibility. and for the long, longest time, taxonomy or classification didn't exist particularly for humans. aristotle invent it. essentially, classification made it much more popular for the western world and other places as well. certainly north africans were thinking about this, but what's really important during the 17th and 18th century is that the word race going to be used in a zoological fashion for the first time in 1684. in a journal article that gets republished about 40 years later and people are going to start thinking about the idea that way we can divide the world in a new way in.

fact that article is called a new division of the earth and the new division. the earth is not done by nations it's not done by cultures. it's not by geography per se. it's done by the word done with the word race or type and this is really a hugely important shift. it's taking. during the 18th century. and people are citing different authors they don't cite this guy whose name was bernier, they cite carl linnaeus. linnaeus is the swede who in 1735 published his system of nature who system in natura and in book he will break down into four different varieties for different types in a schematic way. for the first kind of scientific and first scientific classification scheme, hugely influential to. see people being organized in what looks very much like a hierarchy and this is going to show up it's very interesting. this is only five years later we

see linnaeus being cited in several of these essays, taxonomy and classification and in general are what really makes race talked about environment talked about genealogical. we talk about anatomical explanations but taxonomy provides the intellectual for race. it allows centuries if, not millennia of xenophobia be organized in a very clean, rational taxonomic schematic kind of fashion. and so instead of looking at different types of people in travel narratives or looking at trying to figure out who people are by reading compilations or encyclopedias or a classification, creates hierarchies, it's much more readily. and you can really start thinking about people as separate categories. so we really have those five tendencies which are really very important for the genesis of idea of race in the 18th century, right?

a really interesting focus group. oh, my goodness. this is absolutely incredible. and so what's so interesting thing about this also now in our there's been this big toward stem, right science technology engineer math and and and some time now for a long time a sense that somehow those those fields have a greater power claim to the truth in some way. these are the objective pathways of knowledge, whereas other things like theater or or even religion for some people seem to be a secondary or lower way of knowing. and so there's this strength of of science that seems to be to be gathered here, but also it's

completely fallacious. they're there. these barrier experiments listening to you, i, i couldn't help but wonder how how could he have seen black blood, black internal organ lines? do you think that there's fabrication going on or or maybe witnessing a medical anomaly because. we know that the that our organs inside do all look the same are made of the same so so it's just so interesting this this weird kind of brackish water moment where science is trying assert itself, where these types of thinkers coming forward and saying we can make these truth claims, but also at the same time sort of what they consider scientific would not pass the test in terms of our rigors of

process today. yeah what a rich question i think that if we look back to the role of science and proto science during the 18th century there a lot of things we can say first thing is that theoretically the 18th century is the century where thinkers, anatomists and scientists and i should say natural philosophers and naturalists had inherited ideas from bacon and locke. it's supposed to be century of great empiricism moving away from descartes idea that there are these ideas that are already out there, and we will base understanding of reality on those approaches and empirical view of the world is one where you observe, you assess, and then you draw your conclusions after the fact. so this is kind of impressive in one of one. and most of these people had been bathing in these ideas. yet, as you said, somebody like barton or or mekel, all the

other anatomy are on a quest to something. and i think the problem they were convinced that there was some fundamental difference. and more they look, the more they find things. and so this anatomical kind of insanity that you're describing begins in the 17th century with a guy by the name of mal piggy who theoretically something called the mal piggy layer or the red mucosa, which is actually just the area where melanin resides in the skin. so everybody, of course, this everybody's got the same color. everybody's got the same color. but when anatomists were looking for things, they were just they they were sure that there was something really different in africans and that's why the attention is always you know directed toward africans and find things and when they publish them and this is important when they publish them they get huge reactions and they'll pick in later becomes

for voltaire, for example, the french his rallying cry we africans are separate species. he's a polish genius. he believes that these people are separate. and so he's going to be looking at these anatomical structures as a justification for that idea. so i think we have to acknowledge the fact that these things had such huge impact in the same way that in the academy that certain things are are hot african. it was hot. i think even entirely spurious. wow. and and so let me ask you, thinking of these ideas and with this deep knowledge that you have of these particular essays, is there a a favorite one? i think when when readers are going to pick up this book and start to read through these essays, they might be a bit shocked by how completely they are and.

and some of these ideas that are that are being put forward. so was there one when you first read it that you found particularly entered, tainting or shocking in its ideas. well, i certainly i spent the most time thinking about that one by barbara, but the one that i should just cite, henry louis gates skip his favorite one is the one having to do with maternal imagination. so maternal imagination. and what's that you're going to ask him? so the idea there is a very prevalent idea which actually dates from antiquity that an improperly stimulated female imagination during just abortions can imprint itself on the fetus. it's growing inside the woman in the womb. so one of the explanations naturally for blackness is that a woman along long time ago, a

white woman was either fantasizing about something black or a different white woman is thinking about a black man. she's having sex with a white man and produces black child. so this huge kind of theory of maternal imagination shows up in many these essays. there's one in particular that has a pretty sophisticated, developed idea of, maternal imagination. but this idea is quite in the in the 18th century. so think that's the kind of to the fun one. if there is a fun one in this quote, in this kind of rogue's gallery of explanations of human difference. oh, my gosh. so so you see how this type of quote unquote, science was excised writing for people to read. they're reading about these sort of magical phenomena in bodies and in the and then maternal imagination and what's happening when people are having sex, you

know, sort of a not quite the cosmo magazine of but certainly not the the the of journal articles that circulate in scientific journals about a biological phenomena. yes i think that's right if you can kind of close your idea your eyes and think about the different kinds of essays that are here you have essays that believe in pure metaphysics the idea of god. you know putting his or her hand on something and a phenomenon and creating something there that's metaphysical. it's beyond the physical realm. you have really a cut and dry anatomical scientific things which don't talk about god at all. it's all about nature and the phenomena associated with nature you have things kind of in between. you've got climate plus religion, you have anatomy plus religion, and then you have this really kind of liminal zone of maternal imagination, which kind of seems magical, but for a lot

of people would be seen as something perfectly natural because it's not. it kind of diabolical intervention, although those are a that's a different but it's an it's an idea somehow that there was there is something that can happen that can really change. and rheology and embryology is actually really very much related to this question as well. and it gets into the religious less natural idea. so you're talking about sex and procreation and where people come from. that's part and parcel of this of this whole question. wow. so if you think about eggs a little bit and the fact that people were beliefs that the world was created 6000 years before that that makes a lot of makes a lot of problems for people thinking about eggs and the way that that naturalists at the time dealt with it is they said that everything was preformed almost like russian doll that in every woman have

every woman or god at this at the time the world was created with humans next to first animals the eve had all the eggs that would go all the way to. the end of creation. wow. so they're looking at this in this in way. and and so when you start about different human humans colors, you get into all sorts of problems. certain people said that, oh, a certain time the eggs turn black and then there's a then some of the are saying, no, no, no. if you look at what happens in barnyard, you know, you have hybrids, you have kind of a more dynamic nature. and so they start talking about an epidemic. the notion of embryonic, where two things are coming together and creating new things, and perhaps you're going to create a new variety because you've moved to a different environment and that's going to produce a different type of person. so this question of embryology is very much linked to. the kind of tension between religion and science, and also

to things like the maternal imaginings and the idea that somehow something natural can really change in the present. wow. and and listening to you, it's also clear with this particular example, the maternal imagination, that gender, that the notion of men and women and their roles in this process is also under examination here. yeah i think gender is is really another kind of hidden aspect of this question. the first thing is that the term african, the term the term used for african be the equivalent of -- in. these essays and generally that term is being used in order to talk about men because most of the enslaved people in the caribbean were men. and so there's this kind of funny thing that's happening there and it translates into the

scientific as well. we were talking about an african or a a black. they are thinking generally men there would be a of a female equivalent word for a woman and about a woman --. and so occasionally that name comes up. but generally the default setting for africans in these essays and when we're talking about africans of caribbean is the the male. and that's one thing that's interesting there are also on the level of kind of sexuality i think it's important to talk about the fact that a when europeans talking about west africans, there's the idea that they can do things that no other no other people do because nature is so much more and wild in africa. africa has the animals that europeans can can't even fathom and the same thing is attributed to africans themselves. africans in particular compared

to everyone else in the globe, have the reputation among. people writing travelogs and natural historians as being hyper sexual. there's a real sexuality associated with africans that is not associated with any other group of people in and travelogs. and so there's there's an idea that somehow this may actually translate as well into things having to do with with fertilization of eggs and conception, gestation and so on and so forth. wow. yeah, that is really interesting. i just i'm going to want to talk in a minute about the result of the contest and whether somebody won. but but i just want to do one little digression here. if these if these stereotypes very negative anti black stereotypes are circulating. and earlier we were about the fact that there are these black

individuals african and african descended creoles who are in at the time numbering in the thousands. when we think about country in the way that it's its face quite literally was already changing, what are the other manifestations, you know i'm thinking about, about the question of controlling bodies. who's actually to be there and what are they allowed to be doing? is the state also thinking these questions, is there a way in which if these essays are of scientific interest but of popular interest in some way, is there also a kind of governmental or state application and reaction to these ideas about african and african descended people? so that's a really great question because allows me to

clarifies one of the rule the roles of members of the bordeaux academy. they said men have pretty much half had some kind of real experience in terms of science. they might be hydrographer or something like that or botanists. the other half were these nobles, including someone like montesquieu was a member of the bordeaux academy of science and he was very interested in climbing in climate theory and a lot of were members of parliament, including montesquieu. now why do i bring this up? i bring this up because. in 1738 the king is realizing there are a lot of africans and creole africans circulating in france and. he's very nervous about miscegenation and race mixing. and so he creates a proclamation that needs to be ratified by the part parliaments all over europe and so not of course ratifies that and what it does is it essentially doubles on the

legalization of slavery in france and also controls the the roles of africans and enslaved africans who showing up in france. they need to for a short amount of time and leave. they need to have a job and a and they need to get training. so it's almost a kind of vocational school for them to go back and work in the colonies. and that's really interesting because first, i mean, you know, the bordeaux was hard to find a kind of a link. there's very kind of real few concrete links. but the idea that the members of the academy would then go over to parliament and vote on the legality of slavery during in 1738 i think was really interesting. and the second thing that, you know, to get to to to look at this question a little bit more broadly, was that france for the longest was a had benefited from the free soil principle. this was something that was instituted during the middle

ages. the idea that you would show up in france, you'd set foot in france and you would be free. and in fact, there were all french three are all kind of part of the same kind of etymology realm. and what happened in 1719 was that the regent who replaced louis 14th, the sun king, who had died, was very pro colonial and got rid of the free soil principle in the same way of declaration of proclamation that the africans who came to france would not free. so this is that kind of free principle and. you could see that this goes on in france quite a bit. the there are a of debates about this on the legal level. i'm not an expert on that, but it's really fascinating to see that the idea of freedom was was being debated in french in french legal circles throughout the 18th century. and in certain regions. this would be ratified and other

places would vote for or against it. yes. but it is fascinating to write that aren't there's a lot of kind of new policing that goes on during the 18th century, in the 1770s. there's also something called the police of the blacks, which is instituted to kind of make sure that there were not too many africans and in fact, in bordeaux, there's a time where they're all kind of locked up in the same area. yes. yes. and i think so important and powerful and something that will be of interest to c-span viewers is that these questions of policing black bodies of surveillance, of racial profiling can be tracked back hundreds of years, can be tracked back to this to this period and that there is just, as you said, 1777, this law that's called la police, they the policing of blacks, police of blacks. so it's just so interesting. i want to bring us back to this essay contest and to what

happens, what who wins, what what what happens, what is the do with these? so as i said, they get together and they look at these essays and. they had very strict rules about who could win, who could not. so in the archives you can see it's very short annotations. the essays themselves arrive two weeks late, excluded from the so there are four or five that are in that case. and i also mentioned the fact that i saw the document that summarized theoretically what had happened during the contests. and it was not very but what we do know is that the members of the board who royal academy of sciences said, this contest is going to be null and void because they couldn't find something that was up to their standards or for some other reason they were of canonizing the essay on anatomy because it had no mention of god.

they very much scientific, but they wanted to actually have it both ways. they didn't want to publicize things that would go against the faith. so maybe that's one reason. so what's interesting about this is that in the archives it also found something that mentioned that in case in cases where they did not give a prize for a contest, they would take the money and shares or maybe a share in the company of the indies, which is a trading company during the century which was involved very much in the traffic of enslaved africans. and so it's interesting to see that there is kind of a concrete link between the contest and the slavery taking place in the french caribbean that made bordeaux a rich place. oh, my. wow. well, well, speaking about the results of this, i to talk a little bit about the the the legacy sort of what what happens next.

so so in this book which this is such a wonderful addition that that you it there was actually a second contest in bordeaux run by that academy and so i'd love to hear more about the second contest what's the question what happens and then we can take a little bit of time to talk about maybe the sort of the long term ramifications of this of this whole moment of thinking in history. sure so, yes, in the 1770s, things are shifting dramatically in france and without falling too much into trap of what historians call periodization, they look at the fact that decade and say that people are thinking this way then and this way then and this way, then this whole project kind of debunks that because it is a vertical slice of time and it shows people are thinking a lot different ways and yet generally in the 1740s, 1730s, the more

naturalistic or philosophical people that we associate with the enlightenment are preoccupied with. one big thing and is not africans, is god and getting rid of god, at least pushing god to the side so that they can get on with the business of real science and real thinking and real humanistic pursuits. so certainly they among those pursuits is, the question of the human and as we move from the anthropocentric to the anthropological, that's what's happening. we're going from an idea of a universal human. the idea that interested in everybody to the idea of we're interested in kind of people down and thinking about their specific aptitudes and liabilities. and that's a very different kind of thing. so that's 1740, 1750. so we start moving through time and philosophers start getting much more interested in the in general, including colonial

world and many them are realizing that what is going on. the colonial world is awful. and among those people are. detrow a guy by the name of renale r, a y and l, and there are a lot of other kind of proto anti-colonial or at least kind of questioning the colonial empire and happens in 1770, in particular or is this same guy i just mentioned, niall r a y and a our publishes a book called the history of the two indies. the east indies and the west indies. and this is a philosophical and historical interrogation of the colonial enterprise by europeans first time, something happens and this wakes people up because it's only a description of colonization in a kind of celebratory way. but it does have that element. it talks about what we might call race, it talks about the abuses, the particularly the

abuses of the evil spanish. because the french are always kind saying the spanish are terrible. and the abuses in the new in particular, in fact, that millions of amerindians were killed by disease and the spanish in particular. so anyway, this book is really making people think twice about a lot of stuff and this is also the same time a number of thinkers of voltaire, whom i mentioned, elvis, use did doctorow are questioning questioning the existence of slavery. some people want to reform, make it better, make it enlightened. and there's a great oxymoron. the idea of enlightened slavery and some people are real abolitionists wanted to stop slavery, at least stop the slave trade. so by 1770, bordeaux which is a city which has really benefited from slavery, is looking in the

mirror and one of their some of their academy members actually are very much involved with the slave trade and they're thinking about these things in the same way that people thought about apartheid and think for a long time. so there are there are protests. there are a lot of people who are trying to figure out what bordeaux can do. and so they publish a new contest. how can. i think the idea is that we're looking for doctors to supply essays on how they can improve conditions of enslaved africans during the middle passage. so this is a kind of an idea that's very much linked to idea of enlightened slavery, the idea that rationalization, progress, we can make it better, better, both for the planter and better both for the enslaved. they only get three essays because at least i think i think that was such an incendiary topic at the time.

they didn't want to incur the wrath of the rainfalls and they did rosa the world who were taking their pen and writing vociferously against the pro slavery lobby delauro in particular is amazing. and i wrote a biography of deidre i just love this guy. so interesting but he he said that there be a code of law as opposed to a code noir, which the french slave code and that the white planters will be put the sword. he said this ten years before haiti took place. he also refuted all the racial justifications of slavery in a way that no one had ever done before. so in bordeaux, they're really thinking about this, and in a way that's crazy, enlightened, but at the same time really is not enlightened at all because it's not anti-slavery. it's asking, hoping for a better of slavery that will allow people from bordeaux to maintain their wonderful economy and all the advantages. having a direct and huge

relationship with the caribbean world by. the 1770s. wow. well, thank you so much this has been so fast innovating and i'd just love it. we have we have one minute left if you could tell, what would you and henry louis gates like your readers the readers who is black and why to take away from this very fascinating in history that are bringing to the public with these essay contests. well i think it's important for people to understand that race wasn't invented. and this allows us all to see each other as regular humans and normal and universal. so there's a kind of a universalism that is part parcel. this this whole idea, which is interesting. and i think it's also allows us to think about creating a more skeptical view of some of the racialized taxonomies and that

we hear about still in the press in there, there's a lot of kind of racial science that is being used against people of color, a lot of reasons, whether it's in the medical industry, in health care is a perfect example. but i think that a lot of these structures have flipped and reformed and they find themselves contemporary culture. and hopefully reading this will allow people to kind of stand back, understand the methods that contributed to these. fantastic. well, thank you so much, dr. curran. it's a pleasure to talk to you. thank you so much,good afternoo.

i'm ben olinsky i'm the senior vice president for structural and governance here at the center for american progress. and it's my pleasure to welcome you this afternoon for an incredibly important conversation on on the filibuster with senator jeff an