# Was Europe (1500-1789) a black civilisation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 22, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194 "2009-12-22T15:21:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/41 "2009-12-22T16:47:14Z")
> [@Egmond\_Codfried](#): > > Thats why, up to the French revolution they started to paint themseves white. Why would people already white, paint themselves and wear blond wigs? It’s called “fashion”. And all the world’s its slave, even the nobility. ---
**Author:** ![Egmond\_Codfried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@Egmond\_Codfried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Egmond_Codfried)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/42 "2009-12-22T16:48:11Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > That’s some first-rate well poison you got there… Racism exist, I did not invent it. I’m offering a solution. ---
**Author:** ![Egmond\_Codfried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@Egmond\_Codfried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Egmond_Codfried)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/43 "2009-12-22T16:49:56Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > It’s called “fashion”. And all the world’s its slave, even the nobility. Can intelligent people look at different explanations? The white make up was made with poisonous lead or arsenic. This made it a bleaching creme. Would whites use a bleaching creme? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/44 "2009-12-22T16:51:37Z")
Why would royalty want to hide their blackness? I’d expect the opposite - commoners walking around in blackface in order to look more “upper class”. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/45 "2009-12-22T16:51:38Z")
> [@Egmond\_Codfried](#): > > My theory is built on many pillars. Like: > Personal descriptions > black images > black described yet shown as whites. why? What, specifically, are you sources? More specifically I want to know what your primary sources are. > [@](#): > > Most eurocentric studies were written by ideological racists I’m finding the same to be true of Afrocentric studies. Odesio ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/46 "2009-12-22T16:51:48Z")
> [@Egmond\_Codfried](#): > > My theory is built on many pillars. Like: > Personal descriptions You are kind of missing the point. A common term for what we would refer to as “Black” nowadays is “Moor”. ([Cite](http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Moors)). You have given a couple of places where the term used is “black”, which is a bit ambiguous. Do you have some instances where some European noble is described as being “a Moor”? > [@](#): > > black images > black described yet shown as whites. why? I haven’t seen any images that look obviously black. As we have seen, when the portrait of Stuart is in color, he appears rather pink rather than African. Your allegation (as far as I can tell) is that he was really black, but depicted as white in the portraits. But that is circular reasoning. You cannot assume that the portraits were faked until you know for certain that the subjects were black. > [@](#): > > Most eurocentric studies were written by ideological racists So why didn’t these racists attack the black kings and nobility of Europe? Why would they perpetuate the hoax? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![TGWATY](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5e925/32.png) [@TGWATY](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TGWATY)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/47 "2009-12-22T16:52:46Z")
> [@Egmond\_Codfried](#): > > [white obama - Google Zoeken](http://images.google.nl/images?hl=nl&source=hp&q=white%20obama&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi) > > Please consider images of a white Barack Obama. > Does these make him a white man? Does swarthy skin make him black? And the 40,000 dollar question: what difference does it make? ---
**Author:** ![Egmond\_Codfried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@Egmond\_Codfried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Egmond_Codfried)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/48 "2009-12-22T16:55:55Z")
[quote=“Alessan, post:39, topic:522194”] Yeah. Doesn’t answer my question. Incidentally - doesn’t Charles II being referred to as “the Swarthy Stuart” imply that the other Stuarts \*weren’t \*swarthy? Why note someone’s darkness if his whole family is black? [quote] His blackness was excessive. He resembled the very symbol of blue blood. His birth showed that the Stuarts were really of the highest nobility. > [@](#): > > So your saying that Charlie sat for his portrait for hours, maybe days, and when he saw that the painter had depicted him as a white man, instead hanging the guy and burning the painting, he had it hung in his gallery? The white majority needed to be placated, and the kings had propogandistic portraits made for this purpose. The black paintings have now dissapeared or are kept in hiding. Some authentic black portraits are repainted, you still can see the underpaint. Mauritshuis museum describes some under paints of white portraits as fully detailed portraits. Frans Hals Museum shows two 17th century portraits which have repainted faces and hands, with pigments in use after 1712. Both museums claim not to know what this means. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/49 "2009-12-22T16:56:49Z")
> [@TGWATY](#): > > And the 40,000 dollar question: what difference does it make? I’m prepared to cheerfully stipulate that long-dead royals were black, but I have to ask the same question. Also, how (if at all) does the OP’s theory account for racism among Asians? ---
**Author:** ![Egmond\_Codfried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@Egmond\_Codfried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Egmond_Codfried)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/50 "2009-12-22T16:57:58Z")
> [@TGWATY](#): > > Does swarthy skin make him black? And the 40,000 dollar question: what difference does it make? We are deconstructing racism. Some people want racism and white superiority to end, like some people look for a cure for cancer. Swarthy skin means he did not look white. Yet we think of him as white, and museums show him as white. Why? ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/51 "2009-12-22T16:58:44Z")
> [@Egmond\_Codfried](#): > > Racism exist, I did not invent it. I’m offering a solution. No, you’re not. Racially reversing factual history with no evidence does not solve the problem of racism, and that’s the basis of Afrocentrism. About 90% of it just ain’t so, no matter how much handwaving and “research” you do. Cleopatra was not black, and neither were the ruling families of Europe. I find “alien astronaut” theories of things like the pyramids just as annoying as Afrocentrism, because they go the OTHER direction and assume that black and/or proto-Arab Africans could not have possibly created things like the pyramids or the Sphinx. There’s just no actual evidence for your theory, other than your interpretation of the worldview of long-dead people from what is (now) a totally different culture. Western culture may be the descendant of the culture of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it’s not the same as that culture. Part of your error is that you’re assuming that perceptions and the words used to describe them are the same as they were then. “Swarthy” is a word that would more likely be used to describe an Italian, or a Spaniard, than an African, at that time (or even into the early 20th Century). ---
**Author:** ![Egmond\_Codfried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@Egmond\_Codfried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Egmond_Codfried)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/52 "2009-12-22T16:59:45Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I’m prepared to cheerfully stipulate that long-dead royals were black, but I have to ask the same question. > Also, how (if at all) does the OP’s theory account for racism among Asians? What is OP? When Europeans discovered asians and their riches, they found reason to declare them sub-humans. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/53 "2009-12-22T17:01:26Z")
> [@Egmond\_Codfried](#): > > black images The images you’ve shown are woodcuts, and woodcuts tend to [make](http://img3.photographersdirect.com/img/262/wm/pd656957.jpg) [people](http://typographia.oszk.hu/html/kepek/gutenberg/nagy/wolf01.jpg) [look](http://www.levity.com/alchemy/images/paracelsus%20portrait%20woodcut.jpg) [darker](http://img2.photographersdirect.com/img/19309/wm/pd2243830.jpg). It’s because it’s two color printing, and so the way that woodcut printers tried to add definition to faces was by shading them. Combine that with poor quality printing, and you get darker images than you’d otherwise get. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/54 "2009-12-22T17:01:30Z")
> [@Egmond\_Codfried](#): > > What is OP? Original Post, or Original Poster. The post that started the thread. > [@](#): > > When Europeans discovered asians and their riches, they found reason to declare them sub-humans. I don’t think that is what he meant. What I think he meant is, why do Asians have racist feelings towards blacks? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/55 "2009-12-22T17:03:30Z")
> [@Egmond\_Codfried](#): > > Yet we think of him as white I daresay the vast majority of people don’t think of Charles II at _all_. Occasionally his name gets dropped during a _Jeopardy!_ episode, but as historical figures go, he’s not the most popular. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/56 "2009-12-22T17:04:26Z")
Seems like a simple look at history would show a mixing of nobles from different groups. Plenty of it nordic, germanic, slavic, celtic and some smaller part moorish. Your study appears to be flawed from the get go. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/57 "2009-12-22T17:06:08Z")
> [@Egmond\_Codfried](#): > > ridicule and insult. Goodness, I wonder why? ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/58 "2009-12-22T17:06:11Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Original Post, or Original Poster. The post that started the thread. > > I don’t think that is what he meant. What I think he meant is, why do Asians have racist feelings towards blacks? > > Regards, > Shodan Actually, I read that as “Why do Asians have such racist feelings about other Asians?” Racism in east and southeast Asia is horrific. Japanese hate Koreans. Koreans hate Japanese. Everyone hates the Han Chinese, even all the way down into Singapore. Racism (against other Asians and also against Africans AND Europeans) is still enshrined in law in a lot of those countries. Japan is very polite about it, but they seriously dislike pretty much everyone who’s not Japanese. ---
**Author:** ![Egmond\_Codfried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@Egmond\_Codfried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Egmond_Codfried)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/59 "2009-12-22T17:06:44Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > No, you’re not. Racially reversing factual history with no evidence does not solve the problem of racism, and that’s the basis of Afrocentrism. About 90% of it just ain’t so, no matter how much handwaving and “research” you do. Cleopatra was not black, and neither were the ruling families of Europe. > > I find “alien astronaut” theories of things like the pyramids just as annoying as Afrocentrism, because they go the OTHER direction and assume that black and/or proto-Arab Africans could not have possibly created things like the pyramids or the Sphinx. > > There’s just no actual evidence for your theory, other than your interpretation of the worldview of long-dead people from what is (now) a totally different culture. Western culture may be the descendant of the culture of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it’s not the same as that culture. Part of your error is that you’re assuming that perceptions and the words used to describe them are the same as they were then. “Swarthy” is a word that would more likely be used to describe an Italian, or a Spaniard, than an African, at that time (or even into the early 20th Century). > **[Welcome . A Free Art History Course](https://www.shafe.co.uk/)** > > This website and my YouTube channel are a free, in-depth tour of Western art. It is like a giant book with about 10,000 pages and 200 hours of video. Don’t worry if that seems daunting, you can dip in wherever you wish and to help it is divided into... [Anne of Denmark, grandmother of Charles II Stuart, The Black Boy] A desing for The Masque of Blackness (1612), a play in praise of black beauty. According to eurocentrism she is shown in black face. I say she is not, this is what she looked like. Blue blood is black blood The blindingly blond portraits are revisionist fakes. NPG does not show her black images, but you can find those of her husband James I, her son, daughters and grandson. I urge people who will benefit from a change to get into the discussion as I feel that you and I will disagree forever. I just hope you will not repeat you disagreement over and over. That would be annoying. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194/60 "2009-12-22T17:08:55Z")
> [@Egmond\_Codfried](#): > > White Europeans came only 6000 years ago from Central asia to Europe. Not true. The farming displacement hypothesis has been pretty much discredited by DNA studies showing that while farming techniques entered Europe around that time period from the Middle East, native populations were mostly left intact. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-europe-1500-1789-a-black-civilisation/522194.md?page=4)