From White to Yellow
Subtitle: The Japanese in European Racial Thought, 1300-1735
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 712
ISBN-13: 9780773544550
Subjects: Public opinion; Race; Racism; Japan, foreign relations, europe; Europe, race relations
Description: A study of the evolution of European interpretations of the Japanese and the emergence of discourses about race in early modern Europe. Transcending the conventional focus on Africans and Jews within the rise of modern racism, Rotem Kowner demonstrates that the invention of race did not emerge in a vacuum in eighteenth-century Europe, but rather was a direct product of earlier discourses of the "Other." This ... study indicates that the racial discourse on the Japanese, alongside the Chinese, played a major role in the rise of the modern concept of race. While challenging Europe's self-possession and sense of centrality, the discourse delayed the eventual consolidation of a hierarchical worldview in which Europeans stood immutably at the apex.--Provided by publisher