Race is not biological. It is a social construction. Yet we know that in our contemporary world and in history, this construction has real consequences. From enslavement and colonisation to resistance and revolution, the stories of people of colour are often left untold in accounts of the past. This free course, Historical perspectives on race, will introduce you to ideas and scholarship dealing with the construction of race, and help you to start exploring people’s lived experiences of race through a set of case studies from the late eighteenth century onwards.
Overview
Syllabus
- Course introduction
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Key questions
- 2.1 What do we mean when we talk about ‘race’ in the past?
- 2.2 How was the concept of ‘race’ invented?
- 2.3 How did ideas of ‘race’ operate in political, legal and economic terms?
- 2.4 What are the challenges we face in describing ‘race’ in our study of the past?
- 3 Summary of Course introduction
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session1Session 1: The Haitian Revolution
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The impact of the French Revolution
- 3 The great slave rebellion of 1791
- 4 Fighting for and against France
- 5 Summary of Session 1
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session2Session 2: Human ‘zoos’ in the nineteenth century
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Sarah Baartman, the ‘Hottentot Venus’
- 3 Reinforcing colonial stereotypes about Africa: Savage South Africa
- 4 Summary of Session 2
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session3Session 3: Gandhi’s train journey in colonial South Africa
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Racial discrimination in colonial South Africa
- 3 Gandhi’s train journey in South Africa
- 4 Summary of Session 3
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session4Session 4: Yemeni Muslim sailors in Cardiff
- 1 Introduction
- 2 How did Yemeni sailors come to live in Cardiff?
- 3 What was community life like for Yemenis in Cardiff?
- 4 Marriages with Welsh women
- 5 Local backlash: Cardiff ‘race riots’
- 6 Summary of Session 4
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Session5Session 5: Algerian Harkis in France in the 1960s and 1970s
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Harkis and the Algerian War
- 3 Harkis and Pieds-Noirs: Comparing their reception in France
- 4 Summary of Session 5
- 5 Course conclusion
- Where next?
- References
- Acknowledgements
