A01=Mark S. Dawson
Author_Mark S. Dawson
Category=JBSL
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
Category=PDX
Class
Colonisation
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
eq_society-politics
Ethnicity
Health
Human body
Humoralism
Migration
Monogenesis
Nationalism
Racism
Product details
- ISBN 9781526134486
- Weight: 576g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 13 May 2019
- Publisher: Manchester University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Bodily contrasts – from the colour of hair, eyes and skin to the shape of faces and skeletons – allowed the English of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to discriminate systematically among themselves and against non-Anglophone groups. Making use of an array of sources, this book examines how early modern English people understood bodily difference. It demonstrates that individuals’ distinctive features were considered innate, even as discrete populations were believed to have characteristics in common, and challenges the idea that the humoral theory of bodily composition was incompatible with visceral inequality or racism. While ‘race’ had not assumed its modern valence, and ‘racial’ ideologies were still to come, such typecasting nonetheless had mundane, lasting consequences. Grounded in humoral physiology, and Christian universalism notwithstanding, bodily prejudices inflected social stratification, domestic politics, sectarian division and international relations.
Mark S. Dawson is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the Australian National University, Canberra
