The Invention of Whiteness: the Spanish Laboratory
a thread

To mourn the first day of the Invasion, I'm sharing thoughts from a future book.
Much has been written on British colonization of Ireland as a laboratory for creating whiteness in the anglo world. Much less has been...

...written on the equally important Spanish experience, owing in part to anglocentric historiography and to a simplistic anti-imperialism only capable of focusing on the evils of Anglo-US dominance, and denying the centrality of whiteness to Iberian and Latin American societies.

In fact, Spain itself was invented as an integral part of this process of colonization and the creation of whiteness.
It's the year 1000. The concepts of Spain or a white race do not yet exist. Most of the Iberian peninsula is inhabited by a diverse Muslim society. The western...

fringes of Christendom are organizing a major holy war to conquer this territory and exterminate the Muslims (note that many Christians and Jews live peacefully in the Muslim territory).
Spanish mythology will later refer to this as a "Reconquest" but the political & cultural...

groups that organize it did not exist when Muslim armies first took over Iberia around 720. Christian wars of conquest will last more than 500 years and will include frequent massacres of civilians. The bloody process will shape Castillian practices of warfare and create an...