The HELIOS BIBLIOS HOUR :Gomes De Zurara +Johann Blumenbach =WHITE SUPREMACY

Race has only existed for about 600 years. Most people think that the origin of race as a concept came first, then people developed racist ideas, and then, finally, people developed racist policies stemming from their racist ideas. However, the true order of events is different: policy created to further self-interest—the lucrative slave trade of Africans—came first, and only then was race invented to justify the policy. Racist ideas came last.Gomes Eanes de Zurara is a Portuguese historian of the FIFTEENTH century. We owe him in particular the account of portuguese voyages of exploration.He would have been appointed official curator of the royal library before being appointed curator of the Torre de Tombo (National Archives) by Alfonso V on June 6, 1454. That same year he became commander of the Order of Christ led by Infante Henrique.We owe him above all the Chronicles of Guinea for King Alfonso V, a synthesis of the accounts of the voyages of exploration along the African coasts. His chronicle of the reign of Alfonso V will remain unfinished since he died around 1473.Prince Henry the Navigator wanted to get into the slave trade but didn’t want to work with Islamic slave traders, who were enslaving a variety of people including Europeans, Arabs, and Africans.So why do we continue using the word “Caucasian”? To answer that question, it is helpful to understand where the term came from and its impact on our society. The term “Caucasian” originated from a growing 18th-century European science of racial classification. German anatomist Johann Blumenbach visited the Caucasus Mountains, located between the Caspian and Black seas.Georgian woman in the Caucasus, Blumenbach’s favorite skull became the basis of his “Caucasian” race, and with that, a scientific typology of whiteness was born.Plato and Aristotle argued that a successful political society will have a strong set of norms and laws.