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, Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results help us see how Enlightenment thinkers justified slavery.