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The Rise of the Big Black Woman

François Bernier was the salt of the earth. His parents were tillers of the soil in a small farming town in northwestern France. From these humble origins, he would go on to make a significant contribution to Western intellectual history. He would be the first person in the world to create a system of human classification based on “race.”

The field of what is today known as “race science” took off during the long eighteenth century, a period that encompasses the High Enlightenment and the peak of the transatlantic slave trade.1 France and England were cultural and colonial powerhouses during the era. Learned men from these two nations generated a significant portion of the racial scientific theories.

Though Bernier was first to market, scholars have typically overlooked or diminished the significance of his racial theories. But Bernier’s intervention in the field of race science was consequential. His work reveals the centrality of concerns about feminine aesthetics to race-making projects since their inception. That is, integral to Bernier’s and many subsequent racial classification systems was the attempt to pin down fundamental physical differences between Europeans and non-Europeans, with an intense focus on the women in various categories. These differences were to serve as proof of European superiority. In this way, whereas women’s physicality had been largely outside the social distinctions that were made between Europeans and Africans in the Renaissance, by the eighteenth century it was treated as foundational to them. The racialized female body became legible, a form of “text”2 from which racial superiority and inferiority were read.

Bernier was born in 1625 in a small town in Anjou, France. Upon the death of his parents he came under the guardianship of his uncle, a priest.3 At the age of fifteen, he moved to Paris to attend the Collège de Clermont, and it was there that this son of a farmer encountered the high gloss of the French elite, inhabiting the same adolescent social world as the celebrated French playwright Molière. At the Collège, Bernier became most closely acquainted with the notorious opponent of Descartes, the priest and philosopher Pierre Gassendi.4 In the throbbing Parisian metropolis, Bernier trained under Gassendi in philosophy and physiology. Together, the two traveled to the south of France, where Bernier earned a medical degree from the University of Montpellier in just three months. The degree, however, carried the somewhat suspect stipulation that his fast-tracked medical knowledge was not to be exercised in the French commonwealth.

Bernier then set out for different pastures. In late 1658, by then in his early thirties, he landed in India, where he would remain for the next twelve years, serving as the private physician first for Prince Dara Shikoh and then for Dara’s brother and rival for the throne, Aurangzeb. The intimate details of these events and his role as a foreign witness are described in Bernier’s book Travels in the Mogul Empire.5 His travelogue mirrors the narratives written by earlier Europeans on their treks beyond the continent. What distinguished Bernier’s account, however, was that he chose not just to describe men and women from various locales in India but to sort them based on their skin color. According to Bernier, for example, “To be a Mogol it is enough that a foreigner have a white face and profess Mahometanism.” This group was compared to the Franguis, or white Christians from Europe, and to the Indous, “whose complexion is brown.”6

Bernier did not see himself as having invented these distinctions. In fact, he imagines himself an astute interpreter of existing social categories in India, in which he sees skin color as integral. In a letter to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s finance minister, he marvels at the supposed Indian and Mogul fixation on biological purity and color, using the term “race” to mark distinctions between the various subgroups.7

Bernier had not invented the term “race,” which had been in use since the Middle Ages.8 But he was using it in a decidedly different fashion from those who came before. Bernier used the word to designate the clusters of people he encountered who varied by religion, region, and especially hue. The centrality of skin color in his early conception of race signaled a divergence from the ideas of theorists who preceded him. Still, in terms of Bernier’s racial theorizing, this was only the beginning.

In the 1670s Bernier left India and returned to Paris, finding himself in a city embroiled in debates and demonstrations about one of the most pressing issues of his day: slavery. France had entered the transatlantic slave trade nearly a century after England, due in large part to religious infighting between the Catholic establishment and the Protestant Huguenots. The French slave trade was formally authorized by the monarchy in 1648. In 1664 Louis XIV granted Jean-Baptiste Colbert, along with his French West India Company, the sole rights to the transport of slaves from Africa to the French colonies in the Americas.9

The French slave trade was only a few years old by the time Bernier returned to his homeland, and it was experiencing considerable growing pains. Since 1315, the country had maintained what was known as a Freedom Principle, which stipulated that no person could be held as a forced laborer on French soil. This decree, however, said nothing about the practice of slavery in the French colonies, which the monarchy willingly allowed. The king thus found himself in the dubious position of denouncing slavery in the kingdom while issuing royal decrees sanctioning its practice in his colonies. The Janus-faced nature of these polices proved untenable. By the late seventeenth century, a smattering of African slaves were already making their way to French shores, sometimes as servants to colonial administrators, other times as stowaways. Many petitioned for their freedom the instant they set foot in the country. The king’s position was to set free slaves seeking freedom within the country throughout the seventeenth century. This practice collided with the 1685 royal decree known as the Code Noir (Black Code), a law that regulated slavery in the colonies and served as a resounding renewal of colonial policies that condemned Africans to a lifetime of servitude. This inevitably led to ever more Africans seeking a taste of the vaunted but elusive French freedom that was being denied them in the overseas territories.10

Bernier was well aware of the tenuous political situation that slavery posed. He had a personal relationship with Colbert. Moreover, since his return to Paris, Bernier had become a member of Madame de la Sablière’s salon, which was peopled with Louis XIV’s courtiers and other nobles. One of the topics commonly up for debate was whether some groups of mankind were a different species than Europeans and thus natural slaves.11 This was not the first time Bernier would have encountered the question of whether “natural slaves” existed. These claims can be traced to the origin story crafted by Isaac la Peyrère, who in the 1650s conjectured that Gentiles were pre-Adamites, born before and somehow superior to the Jews, who descended from the biblical Adam. Peyrère’s theory was deemed heretical by many in the 1650s, but in the context of the rising slave trade and the profits it generated, many Frenchmen were to soften on this position.

Scholars disagree as to whether Bernier himself was a polygenist, a believer that the human races are of different origins.12 But what is evident is that his travels made him appear to others on the intellectual circuit as an expert on the topic of “alien” peoples. These attitudes, along with Bernier’s studies in physiology, ignited an idea. He resolved to develop his own theory of humanity, one that could encompass and explain the tremendous biodiversity he had encountered on his travels. And in line with his medical training, his theory would be the first to achieve this goal by identifying fundamental physiological differences among swatches of humankind.

In 1684 Bernier sketched out his theory in a letter to Madame de la Sablière that bore the rather grand title “A New Division of the Earth.” In this three-page manifesto, he explained his rationale for developing this new model of humankind: “Hitherto, geographers have divided the Earth only into different countries or regions therein; but my own observations … have given me the idea of dividing it another way.”13 The problem with the traditional, geographic dissection of the globe, he concluded, was that it failed to acknowledge the tremendous physical distinctions found between peoples living in diverse parts of the world. In Bernier’s estimation, “Men are almost all distinct from one another as far as the external form of their bodies is concerned, especially their faces, according to the different areas of the world they live in.”14 And while globe-trotting men such as himself could “often distinguish unerringly one nation from another,” he nevertheless found that common unities of physical form across national boundaries warranted a new system for classifying mankind, a system he called “Types of Race.”15

As noted, Bernier had not coined the term “race.” But with his “New Division of the Earth,” he had fundamentally changed what it meant. In his reimagination of the term, race did not apply only to the lowly “Jewish” or “Moorish” subjects of the crown or to the high-borns within the kingdom. Rather, all of the world’s peoples had a race, one that could be identified both by where they lived and their external physical features.

Curiously, despite Bernier’s certainty that everyone had a physically identifiable race, he nonetheless wavered on how many races there were in all, stating that there were “four or five.”16 The first race included people from three different continents, comprising “the whole of Europe in general except for part of Muscovy, … Africa, namely that between the kingdoms of Fez and Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, … and likewise a large part of Asia.”17 Into the second race he placed nearly the entire continent of Africa, excluding the northern coastal areas already ascribed to the first race.

The third race, covering the nations of China, Japan, and much of east Asia, also included “Usbekistan [sic], … a small part of Muscovy, the little Tartars, and the Turkomans.”18 In the fourth race, standing conspicuously alone, were the Lapps, or the indigenous people of Scandinavia. The almost-fifth race would have been reserved for the indigenous people of the Americas. But upon further consideration, he placed them too into the first type.19

Skin color was the major consideration used to sort people into racial groups. In Bernier’s view, the first race had “white” or sun-tinged “olive skin.” By contrast, black Africans, the so-called second race, had black skin that was the result of their “sperm and blood.”20 This simple one-liner, stated almost as if in passing, was of critical importance. Madame de la Sablière, hostess of his salon, had been an active participant in debates about the role of men’s semen and women’s eggs in the physical features of their offspring.21 She therefore would likely have been invested in questions about the role of sperm in physical appearance. More to the point, this statement revealed Bernier’s position on the biological basis of the physical distinctions among the so-called races. While it is unclear whether he was a proponent of the polygenetic argument, he nevertheless believed that white people were innately and physiologically distinct from black people. This fundamental biological divergence was, he suggested, the basis of the observed external physical differences.22

In his modest treatise, Bernier did not come out in favor of African chattel slavery. Yet, in the context of debates about the appropriateness of enslaving black persons, his assertion that white skin placed one in a biologically distinct “first race” while black skin placed a person in a “second race” carried the connotation of a social ladder of humanity with whites justifiably at the top. These ideas were to be read and expanded upon by subsequent scientists and philosophers, several of whom were deeply invested in maintaining or extending the slave trade.

If Bernier created racial categories for the express purpose of segregating groups of humanity based on their physical appearance, an important part of his project was to detail the particular aesthetic charms (or lack thereof) of the women of each race. Previous scholars have dismissed this aspect of Bernier’s text as some form of bizarre fluff, evidence of his prurient fascination with women’s looks.23 But Bernier was building on a practice of learned men waxing intellectual about women’s beauty that had existed since the Renaissance. Moreover, the section on female charms takes up nearly half of Bernier’s brief manifesto. Under the circumstances, Bernier’s estimation of women was not off-color, nor was it novel.24 It simply used a new language, that of “race,” to make judgments about feminine loveliness.

Bernier entered the discussion about race-specific female attractiveness with a note about the so-called Hottentot.25 “Hottentot” was a derogatory name created by Dutch settlers. In theory, it applied to the Khoikhoi living in the area encompassing the Cape of Good Hope and extending to Cape Town in South Africa. In practice, however, it was often applied to all Khoisan, meaning both the Khoikhoi and the Bushmen of South Africa.26 “Blacks of the Cape of Good Hope,” Bernier wrote, “seem to constitute a different type from those of the rest of Africa. They are usually smaller, thinner, with uglier faces.”27 His estimation of the Hottentot is noticeably similar to the common view of Africans in England and Holland during the period as “little, low, and foul.” Bernier was, in fact, attuned to existing stereotypes of the Hottentot, which he exposes by stating, “Some Dutchmen say they speak Turkey-Cock.”28

What distinguished Bernier from the Dutch and English, however, was his assessment that the small, thin, and unappealing Hottentot were an aberration among blacks, a “different type,” albeit relegated to the same race. The Hottentot, in his view, may have been short, meager, and unattractive, but this said nothing of the appearance of blacks generally, and especially black women. On the contrary, Bernier wrote, he had encountered black women who were among the most beautiful in the world:

What I have observed as regards the beauty of women is no less differentiated. Certainly, there are lovely ones, ugly ones to be found everywhere. I have seen some real beauties in Egypt, which put me in mind of the fair and famed Cleopatra. Among the Blacks of Africa I have also seen some very beautiful women who did not have thick lips and snub noses. I have encountered seven or eight in various places who were of such an astonishing beauty that they put in the shade the Venus of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome—with aquiline nose, small mouth, coral lips, ivory teeth, large bright eyes, gentle features and a bosom and everything else of utter perfection. At Moka, I saw several of them completely naked, waiting to be sold, and I can tell you, there could be nothing lovelier in the world to see.29

Bernier affirms racial differences in beauty by claiming that, like physical features in general, “the beauty of women is no less differentiated.”30 Nevertheless, he certifies black women’s attractiveness by using the existing standard for white women: “aquiline nose, small mouth, coral lips, ivory teeth, large bright eyes, gentle features.”31 In this way, the black women who were good-looking could lay claim to that title only because of their similarity to the neoclassical ideal of Venus. Indeed, these women appear to be beating the Venus at her own game. Although Bernier was influenced by the trail of black denigration left by the Dutch and the English, he did not let their perspective of black women contradict what he had seen with his own eyes.

His discussion of the attractiveness of (some) black women was only the starting point of his extended treatment of racially specific enticements. Bernier also included sections on the women he encountered in India, Turkey, and Persia. His work reveals the centrality of concerns about aesthetics, especially women’s appearance, in the articulation of racial theories. That is, to the extent that “sperm and blood” determined race and appearance, beautiful women could serve as proof of a certain type of inherent racial superiority, or inferiority.

The long-term impact of Bernier’s theories has been debated.32 But as a progenitor of racial theories, Bernier was often cited by subsequent race theorists. Later race theorists would routinely use race as a justification for the colonial condition, and as a way to determine the attractiveness of women around the world. In the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the context of the Enlightenment and the peak of the slave trade, the science of race-making took flight. Then, as at its inception, philosophers underscored the purported racial distinctions in facial features, body type, and attractiveness between black women and white women.

Bernier’s notion of race had touched a nerve. His letter to Madame de la Sablière was eventually published in the esteemed Journal des Scavans for the broader scientific community to mull over. Still, the evidence of its impact was not to be witnessed for another sixty years. As it turned out, many French scientists and philosophers at the time of his writing were preoccupied with either toeing the intellectual line or fleeing the country in the face of renewed religious persecution.

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A variety of freedoms were restricted by Louis XIV in the 1680s. The king had long been begrudging at best when it came to the rights of Protestants. But in the watershed year of 1685, alongside the Code Noir, the king also issued the Edict of Fontainebleau. This order unraveled the Edict of Nantes, which had offered Protestant Huguenots a modicum of freedom in a Catholic nation, thereby effectively outlawing Protestantism in the territory. At the outset, rather than fight another bloody religious war, many Protestants chose to flee, repairing to various parts of England, the Dutch Republic, and Prussia.33 But by the turn of the eighteenth century, many of the remaining Protestants, calling themselves the Camisards, took up arms in a new war. The reinvigorated religious battle competed with the war of Spanish succession for the king’s attention and the crown’s resources until Louis XIV’s death in 1715.

The king’s death had a ripple effect, triggering several important developments that would allow the national intelligentsia to return to honing their ideas of race. For one, Louis XIV’s policies had prevented widespread slavery in the French territories. His passing gave functionaries an opportunity to push for new legislation enabling slave owners to safely travel to their homeland with their human assets in tow, without fear of these assets being liberated on arrival.

The Edict of October, issued in 1716, intended to quell these fears by introducing new regulations that would allow slave holders to keep their slaves as long as the slaves were registered at the courthouse; unregistered slaves could be set free. Louis XV himself issued the next key piece of legislation, the Declaration of 1738, stipulating that unregistered slaves, rather than being freed, would be seized and sent back to the colonies, where they would presumably find themselves slaves to a new master.34 Importantly, these codes were to be specifically applied to nègres, or African slaves. This meant that persons coming before the court demanding their freedom could be set free if they could successfully prove that they were not African. Such “proof” was generally found in their physical traits, those having been elaborated by Bernier and a host of non-French European authors since the fifteenth century. Beginning in the 1740s, the intensely controversial nature of these laws and their requisite practice prompted a variety of intellectuals to revisit the question of potential fundamental differences within humankind.

In addition, the late king’s death created the space for intellectual liberty that would allow the Enlightenment to flourish in France. The Enlightenment was a European intellectual movement that had actually begun in the mid-seventeenth century. Kindled by Descartes’s 1637 Discourse on Method and its infamous postulate, “I think, therefore I am,” a whole new era of inquiry developed in which reason was regarded as the primary source and arbiter of knowledge. These new adventures in what was called “rationalism” had been taking place largely outside the French commonwealth—in England, Scotland, and the Dutch Republic—since, in Descartes’s home country, his ideas been deemed heretical by the monarchy. The death of Louis XIV loosened the monarchy’s stranglehold on the dissemination of nontraditional ideas, officially launching the French Age of Reason. It was within this cultural and political environment that many of the most renowned thinkers of the French Enlightenment felt compelled to return their attention to the judiciously applied “fundamental differences” that exist within humanity. And quite promptly, Enlightenment luminaries like Georges-Louis Leclerc picked up where Bernier had left off.

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