You didn’t get my point. When the legal definition changes from “people X is white” to “people Y is white”, that does not necessarily chance on what characteristics the definition is based. It just means that the perception of who fulfills these characteristics changed. And historically, not being white usually was depending on a people or culture being perceived as (for example) “brutish”, “uncivilised”, “less intelligent” etc. These characteristics have not changed much.
Can you point me to a non-US source showing that Italians (or rather people from the area of modern day Italy) were debating or thinking about concepts like “whiteness” in the 17th century? (Or really at any time). I am really curious where those debates among members of a country or realm were using that as a category in discussions or considerations.
The concept of whiteness originated in the context of the slave trade from Africa to the New World and the enslavement of indigenous americans by the Spanish empire. According to anthropologist Irene Silverblatt, white, black and brown were used to described colonisers, slaves and colonised as far back as the 17th century by spanish colonisers in Latin America.
Swedish biologist Carl von Linné proposed the four coloured race scheme (black, brown, yellow, white) in 1785.
I am, however, not aware of any italian sources or discussions before the 19th century. There then are for example Antonio Bresciani’s Dei costumi dell’isola di Sardegna comparati cogli antichissimi populi orientali (A Comparison of the Customs of the Island of Sardinia with Those of the Ancient Eastern Peoples) or Cesare Lombroso’s works (e.g. L’uomo bianco e l’uomo di colore (The White Man and the Man of Color)). Interestingly, in these Italians consider themselves mostly “white” but attributed certain features (like black hair or bigger lips) as “foreign contamination” and higher crime rates in southern Italy to these “contaminations”.
I’ll post this once more since the definitions of Whiteness change a lot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States
You didn’t get my point. When the legal definition changes from “people X is white” to “people Y is white”, that does not necessarily chance on what characteristics the definition is based. It just means that the perception of who fulfills these characteristics changed. And historically, not being white usually was depending on a people or culture being perceived as (for example) “brutish”, “uncivilised”, “less intelligent” etc. These characteristics have not changed much.
Can you point me to a non-US source showing that Italians (or rather people from the area of modern day Italy) were debating or thinking about concepts like “whiteness” in the 17th century? (Or really at any time). I am really curious where those debates among members of a country or realm were using that as a category in discussions or considerations.
During the 17th century, all sources were non-US.
The concept of whiteness originated in the context of the slave trade from Africa to the New World and the enslavement of indigenous americans by the Spanish empire. According to anthropologist Irene Silverblatt, white, black and brown were used to described colonisers, slaves and colonised as far back as the 17th century by spanish colonisers in Latin America.
Swedish biologist Carl von Linné proposed the four coloured race scheme (black, brown, yellow, white) in 1785.
I am, however, not aware of any italian sources or discussions before the 19th century. There then are for example Antonio Bresciani’s Dei costumi dell’isola di Sardegna comparati cogli antichissimi populi orientali (A Comparison of the Customs of the Island of Sardinia with Those of the Ancient Eastern Peoples) or Cesare Lombroso’s works (e.g. L’uomo bianco e l’uomo di colore (The White Man and the Man of Color)). Interestingly, in these Italians consider themselves mostly “white” but attributed certain features (like black hair or bigger lips) as “foreign contamination” and higher crime rates in southern Italy to these “contaminations”.