The French encounter with Africans : white response to Blacks, 1530-1880
"William B. Cohen traces the ways in which negative attitudes toward blacks became deeply embedded in French culture. Examining the forces that shaped these views, Cohen reveals the persistent inequality of French interactions with blacks in Africa, in the slave colonies of the West Indies, and in France itself. A key role in the formation of negative stereotypes is shown to have been played by the eighteenth-century philosophes, who, while proclaiming human equality, fostered doctrines of biological racism that emerged fully formed in the nineteenth century's newly developing sciences, especially physical anthropology. Describing the types of social relations that evolved from these conceptions, Cohen connects the question of race to the rise of European imperialism and issues of labor and colonialism. First published in 1980, The French Encounter with Africans is of immediate relevance to today's discussions of racism, ethnicity, identity, colonialism, and empire."--BOOK JACKET
Print Book, English, 2003
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2003