An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Professor Maeve Callan (American Philosophical Society Fellow, 2026)
The Origins of European Whiteness and Its Intersections with the Making of Medieval Britain and Ireland
“Whiteness” is often assumed to be a modern invention, commonly claimed to first emerge in the American colonies, especially in response to Bacon’s rebellion in 1676, a strategy of the ruling elite to divide and conquer poor laborers by enabling those of European ethnicity to cling to a sense of superiority which afforded them certain privileges due to their skin color. Yet European whiteness was already about a millennium old by that point. In this work-in-progress, I provide an overview of the development of European whiteness and its intersections with the making of medieval Britain and Ireland, exploring the ways in which color was and wasn’t used in ethnic conflicts from the fifth century on, as well as the ways in which imagined divides in religious identity functioned in similar ways, even when all involved shared the same faith.
Meeting ID: 384 971 962 716 1
Passcode: nV6Rg79e