Originally posted by pinguin
Well, in the Colonial Spanish Empire, the reality was quite different. Although people lived together, everyone stayed at its place. And everyone understood key saying such as "improving the race". Therefore, for me is hard to believe racism was absent in ancient empires. |
Yes, DISCRIMINATION has always existed in every society, and so did social class exist in EVERY society; but social class had not always been defined by "racial appearance".
The modern concept of race is heavily influenced by the colonialism in the last few centuries, during which most, if all all empires were of European origin, and therefore the "upper classes" of the empires had European facial features.
The add to that was the African slave trade, during which subconsciously, people tended to equate black skin with "slavery".
In Ancient Empires, caste systems and discrimination did exist between the nobility and the commoners, the freemen and the slaves, yet up to now, I have not heard of a single ancient empire who held a census that divided its population by skin colour, hair colour etc.
The Romans, the Chinese, and the Persians, placed great emphasis on one's tribal origins; yet "tribal origins" were a rather fluid concept as one could be "adopted" by another tribe and become a fully-fledged member. It is probabaly very similar to what we call today: nationality.
Slaves did exist and were often treated harshly, yet it wasn't defined by colour. In the Egyptian, Roman, and Persian empires, there were slaves of light and dark skin; as well o nobility of light and dark skin.
The Roman Empire indeed treated its colonies very harshly, yet "Romaness" was never defined by "race", especially "race" in the modern concept. the city of Rome itself was founded by 2 very distant ethnic groups: Latins and Etruscans; and the early Roman nobility had members of both bloodlines, as well as the plebeians.
In the colonies, many pure-blooded natives became Roman citizens and ten rose up the ranks to become part of the nobility, or even the Emperor. Out of all the Roman dynasties, only the first 2 were of Italian origin. Later on there were Hispanics, North Africans, Syrians, Illyrians etc.
Even today, the importance of "racial appearance" differs from society to society.
In the USA and South Africa there was apartheid, yet in Egypt, having darker or lighter skin had little to do with one's social status, instead, it was whether you're Christian or Muslim.
Many other nationalities like Tatars, Uzbeks, Uighurs also display very diverse racial appearance from pure Mongoloid to nordid caucasoids; yet unlike in Latin America, these nationalities do not consider one type of racial features to be "socially superior" than another because historically they did not have a "racially-defined" nobility.
I'm sure they have other ways to discriminate one from the other, but certainly not by colour.