Who’s Black and Why?

In the 1740s, Bordeaux developed some of the first modern theories of racial difference, even as the city profited from the slave trade.

A new book by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Andrew S. Curran examines how 18th-century academics understood Black identity.

In 1741, the Royal Academy of Sciences held a contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results show how Enlightenment thinkers justified slavery.