Are
antisemitism and white supremacy manifestations of a general
phenomenon? Why didn't racism appear in Europe before
the fourteenth
century, and why did it flourish as never before in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries? Why did the twentieth century see
institutionalized racism in its most extreme forms? Why are egalitarian
societies particularly susceptible to virulent racism? What do
apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the American South under Jim
Crow have in common? How did the Holocaust advance civil rights in the
United States?With a rare blend of learning, economy, and
cutting insight, George Fredrickson surveys the history of Western
racism from its emergence in the late Middle Ages to the present.
Beginning with the medieval
antisemitism that put Jews beyond the pale
of humanity, he traces the spread of racist thinking in the wake of
European expansionism and the beginnings of the African slave trade.
And he examines how the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century romantic
nationalism created a new intellectual context for debates over slavery
and Jewish emancipation.Fredrickson then makes the first
sustained comparison between the color-coded racism of
nineteenth-century America and the antisemitic racism that appeared in
Germany around the same time. He finds similarity enough to justify the
common label but also major differences in the nature and functions of
the stereotypes invoked. The book concludes with a provocative account
of the rise and decline of the twentieth century's overtly racist
regimes--the Jim Crow South, Nazi Germany, and apartheid South
Africa--in the context of world historical developments.This
illuminating work is the first to treat racism across such a sweep of
history and geography. It is distinguished not only by its original
comparison of modern racism's two most significant varieties--white
supremacy and antisemitism--but also by its eminent readability.