Racism and state formation in the age of absolutism

Virdee, S. (2023) Racism and state formation in the age of absolutism. Historical Materialism, 31(2), pp. 104-135. (doi: 10.1163/1569206x-bja10010)

Abstract

This essay explores four questions through a critical dialogue with Black Marxist, Decolonial, and Political Marxist accounts of racism. First, is it possible to speak of racism before the advent of colonisation in the Americas? Second, what were the determinants for the production of these earlier modalities of racism? Third, who were the key actors responsible for the production of such racism? And fourth, what were the linkages between these developments and racisms that would unfold with the capitalist colonisation of the Americas? I contend that the historical formation of racism as a material force lies in the formation and dissolution of absolutist states in Western Europe between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. By demonstrating how elite political cultures of Western European societies were suffused with the logic of racialisation prior to the colonisation of the Americas, the essay helps render transparent hitherto occluded connections between histories focusing on the internal racialisation of Europe and the racialisation of the European exterior. And in doing so, it establishes the constitutive part racism played in the emergence of capitalist modernity.

• Item Type: Articles (Editorial)
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Virdee, Professor Satnam
• Authors: Virdee, S.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Sociology Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences
• Journal Name: Historical Materialism
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• ISSN: 1465-4466
• ISSN (Online): 1569-206X
• Published Online: 10 July 2023
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © Satnam Virdee, 2023
• First Published: First published in Historical Materialism 31(2):104-135
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons license