Bodies Complexioned: Human Variation and Racism in Early Modern English Culture, c. 1600–1750 by Mark S. Dawson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bodies Complexioned: Human Variation and Racism in Early Modern English Culture, c. 1600–1750 by Mark S. Dawson Rickie Lette Dawson, Mark S., Bodies Complexioned: Human Variation and Racism in Early Modern English Culture, c. 1600–1750, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2019; hardback; pp. 280; 13 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £80.00; ISBN 9781526134486. While unique phenotypic traits are evident among dispersed populations, the concept of race is essentially a social construct and its appropriateness is contested because of its association with the cultural politics of racism. But the fact remains that the term was in reasonably common usage from the early sixteenth century, although without the sinister connotations it later acquired. It is generally accepted that it was not until around the early eighteenth century that the modern concept of race began to develop as a powerful and widespread means to justify discrimination. Although it is easy to find earlier examples of race-based denigration and discrimination, by and large distinctions were made between peoples by Europeans on the basis of cultural differences. But when and how did the immutable interpretations of difference associated with racial discrimination begin to replace the relatively permeable barriers to acceptance presented by ethnocentrism? This is the issue that Mark Dawson explores in Bodies Complexioned. In doing so, he challenges the view that two factors impeded the acceptance of racial stereotyping. The first of these was inertia of belief in humoralism, whose supposedly mutable impact on bodily disposition conflicted with the essentialism of racism. The second factor was that for racism to take hold it had to supplant ethnocentrism. That entailed overcoming belief in monogenesis, Christian universalism, and the importance of sociocultural factors in how Europeans assessed themselves and others. Over six chapters Dawson presents evidence to support his thesis that it was unnecessary for one form of discrimination to supersede another; instead, humoralism itself became the basis of intrasocietal discrimination that was then adapted to accommodate learnings from the encounter of Britons with other peoples. Consequently, the purview of this paradigm of embodied prejudice expanded outwards and become an antecedent of modern racism. In the first four chapters Dawson seeks to demonstrate how widespread this thinking was and what conclusions English people came to concerning the meaning of bodily difference. Something that stands out in these chapters is the impressive range and number of sources that Dawson draws upon, which sets this work apart from many other studies on the early development of racial prejudice in England. The first chapter examines the role of religious discourse in the way in which the body was read. Dawson asserts that religious beliefs were foundational: variation in complexion was thought to have originated with the fall of man, and humoral differences could be used to judge a person’s state of spiritual well-being. That such beliefs were pivotal is unsurprising given the centrality of religion in English society at the time. [End Page 202] In Chapter 2 he turns to the relationship between humoralism and astrology, examining the way in which people had recourse to the latter to better understand their complexions. Dawson reveals just how widespread interest in astrology was, but in doing so overwhelmed this reader with the examples he provides. What he achieves, though, is to demonstrate that implicit in the practice were the assumptions that humoral dispositions were innate, rather than mutable, and inheritable. Chapter 3 focuses on the role of drama in conditioning attitudes to bodily difference. I am sceptical about claims concerning the influence of the early modern English theatre, because it could unsettle as much as reinforce paradigms. However, Dawson’s argument that drama informed people of the embodied markers of social status is well supported. In an impressive feat of research and analysis of descriptions of wanted persons advertised in newspapers, Chapter 4 reveals that physical distinctions were being made systematically and widely by ordinary citizens and highlights that skin tone was progressively becoming a more critical marker of difference. In the fifth chapter Dawson shows how the English transported their humoral logic to make assessments of other peoples, arguing that just as the English could self-identify with certain embodied characteristics, they...