Race as we know was basically made up around the time of post-Recpnquista Spain. Before then, you primarily identified divides between strangers around you by religion. Spain hosted Catholics, Muslims, and Jews. But Ferdinand and Isabella, ultra-Catholics, decreed that all their subjects must convert to Catholicism. So now that we're all Catholic brothers and sisters, how do you figure out who the bad people are? What they look like superficially, and who their ancestors were.
Coincidentally, the kingdoms of Western Europe were also sending expeditions to other continents around this time, continents full of non-Christians who looked very different from Europeans. Non-white, non-Christians who made really great slaves. So race and hierarchies of racial supremacy mutated over centuries as a self-justification for colonization, imperialism, slavery, and genocide.
This of course poses a chicken-and-egg problem. Did racism develop as a justification for colonialism, or did colonialism and slavery happen because Europeans were racist? Both. Both economic self-interest and racial prejudice fed into and intensified each other.
I'll go for a short answer.
Race as we know was basically made up around the time of post-Recpnquista Spain. Before then, you primarily identified divides between strangers around you by religion. Spain hosted Catholics, Muslims, and Jews. But Ferdinand and Isabella, ultra-Catholics, decreed that all their subjects must convert to Catholicism. So now that we're all Catholic brothers and sisters, how do you figure out who the bad people are? What they look like superficially, and who their ancestors were.
Coincidentally, the kingdoms of Western Europe were also sending expeditions to other continents around this time, continents full of non-Christians who looked very different from Europeans. Non-white, non-Christians who made really great slaves. So race and hierarchies of racial supremacy mutated over centuries as a self-justification for colonization, imperialism, slavery, and genocide.
This of course poses a chicken-and-egg problem. Did racism develop as a justification for colonialism, or did colonialism and slavery happen because Europeans were racist? Both. Both economic self-interest and racial prejudice fed into and intensified each other.