Race in the Modern World: An Intellectual History

Few ideas have had a more powerful effect on the modern world than that of race, yet few ideas are less understood. Bringing together contributions from leading international scholars, this volume traces the crystallisation of this concept in western intellectual discourse in the eighteenth century, its rapid rise to prominence as a governing concept across the world from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, and its legacy from the Cold War and era of decolonisation to the present. Through multiple case studies, the chapters provide new angles on more familiar contexts, such as Enlightenment Europe, while introducing related themes in areas including India and New Zealand. Race in the Modern World offers a comparative understanding of the multiplicity of ways that race has been conceptualised, how these ideas changed over time, and how the world of ideas shapes the world in which we live.