Racial mixing: why a different attitude between European countries?

All slave economies in the New World worked roughly as follows.

1. There was a white planter class.
2. There was a black enslaved class.
3. There was another class of free laborers in the middle.

In more tropical climates, there were not many free whites who settled, as the environment was very unhealthy for those of European descent. As a result, the middle rungs of society ended up filled free persons of mixed race. While these people would not be visibly white, they would be whiter than the slaves, and identify culturally with the mother country, due to the comparable privilege their whiter blood gave them.

But in the U.S., a free mixed-race middle class wasn't needed. The climate wasn't quite as bad as in the tropics, and a large free white population was established. The middle class being white, there was no reason to allow for a creole identity to be formed, and thus mixed-race people firmly kept their black identity, and indeed were nearly as frequently slaves once racial lines hardened.
 
Quebec and Argentina are as White as New England.

True about Quebec. Recent genetic studies have shown that despite recorded high levels of interbreeding with natives in early colonial history, virtually no indigenous DNA is found in the Quebecois. But the average Argentine is around 15% Native American, so they aren't as white as New Englanders.

Also, it's worth noting that both Argentine and New England had fairly sizable black populations in the colonial era. It's clear the Argentine black population vanished due to interbreeding with the white population. It's less clear what happened in New England - a notable free black presence in Boston began in the late 18th century, but presumably many of the lone blacks in Massachusetts towns did intermarry with the white population.
 
True about Quebec. Recent genetic studies have shown that despite recorded high levels of interbreeding with natives in early colonial history, virtually no indigenous DNA is found in the Quebecois. But the average Argentine is around 15% Native American, so they aren't as white as New Englanders.

Also, it's worth noting that both Argentine and New England had fairly sizable black populations in the colonial era. It's clear the Argentine black population vanished due to interbreeding with the white population. It's less clear what happened in New England - a notable free black presence in Boston began in the late 18th century, but presumably many of the lone blacks in Massachusetts towns did intermarry with the white population.

Before Vitamin-D fortifying, would northerly locations like New England be unhealthy for blacks? I don't know, I'm just asking.
 
Its also partly because the Spanish were more successful at taking over native societies than the English were. If the early Virginian settlers had easily and effectively subjugated Powhatan's confederacy and other tribes north and south, you would have seen a whole bunch of mestizos.

Whether or not we are more enlightened now, most Americans of whatever race still marry within their race.

-I have my doubts about this; not that I think you're wrong, as I think that the English (and later British) would've done the same thing the Spanish did under the right circumstances in terms of intermarrying with the locals. However, the population density of the Natives wasn't nearly as high in North America as in Mexico and South America, so to me it seems that the odds were stacked against the "mestizo" phenomenon occurring in the British colonies in the long run. Now, had Mexico been conquered by England under similar circumstances and motivation as Spain's, the result would've been similar as well.

-As a general rule yes, but the stigma/taboo has largely disappeared in my experience; it's not like anybody will start a fist-fight or throw bricks through the window over something that irrelevant.
 
-As a general rule yes, but the stigma/taboo has largely disappeared in my experience; it's not like anybody will start a fist-fight or throw bricks through the window over something that irrelevant.
97% of millennials approve of interracial marriage. About 15% of US marriages are interracial (c. 2008)
 
Take a look at the Democratic Republic of Congo. (former Belgian Congo) It looks very similar to its original culture before the Belgian conquest and does not look at all similar to Belgium. There was a civil war in it during the 1990s, i believe, and there is still guerilla warfare in parts of it. This is the same throughout Africa, when you compare former colonies of Spain, England, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands from the late 1800s and early 1900s. England's former colonies in Rhodesia, Egypt, Sudan, South Africa, and Nigeria were not the only colonies who were against racial mixing.

People shouldn't mix the first colonial empires (Nouvelle France for France, east coast for England) and the second ones (19th century colonization. Those were two different kinds of colonisation (mainly settlements and commerce colonies for the first ones, purely imperialist ones for the second ones). Racial policies in the first french colonial empire (except in the carribean but blacks were slaves there, it was probably more a social taboo, lots of colonist had native wifes) and the second colonial empire were very different (no mixed marriage except a few in the settlement colony of Algeria).
 

elkarlo

Banned
Because in the English colonies, men tended to come with their families while in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, those who did come either didn't have their own families or were far away from their own families to start relationships with Native American and African women; plus there weren't a lot of white women to go around in the colonies.



This. Also was before the idea of racial slavery became solidified. After that you saw less race mixing in the Spanish colonies.

BTW it seems as though upwards of 90% of the settlers going to the Spanish Americas were males.

With the Port. They were often times 2 years away from their homeland. No way anyone but the richest or the nuts would bring their wives.
 

elkarlo

Banned
There was just as much mixing in US/English colonies as in Spanish colonies but there was more resistance to freeing slaves so the 'single drop' idea was dreamed up.

I forget the title but one of Twains stories is about a free "white" baby and a slave "black" baby who are switched by the cook after the white mother dies. Each one is raised as the other to adulthood and no one notices (they both have red hair). When the injustice is revealed, using fingerprints, by the town genius the "white" man is freed and the "black" man is sold south to cover some debts.

An interesting fact is that a comparison of census data before and after the civil war shows a significant drop in the colored population. If the detailed data is compared a large part of the drop is in colored is in Octoroon or Lighter colored persons. IE. those most capable of passing if they left the area where they were well known to have 'one drop'.


Ever notice that the crooks or robber characters of pre WWII America seemed to be of people passing as whites? Kinda interesting as it seems that we knew who was not really white and what not, and held it against them.

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People shouldn't mix the first colonial empires (Nouvelle France for France, east coast for England) and the second ones (19th century colonization. Those were two different kinds of colonisation (mainly settlements and commerce colonies for the first ones, purely imperialist ones for the second ones). Racial policies in the first french colonial empire (except in the carribean but blacks were slaves there, it was probably more a social taboo, lots of colonist had native wifes) and the second colonial empire were very different (no mixed marriage except a few in the settlement colony of Algeria).

Yeah, but the thread was specifically asking about "attitudes" toward racial mixing between countries, which presumably couldn't have gotten that much worse over the centuries. Like others have said, mixing probably had less to do with racial tolerance, and much more to do with having a nearly all-male white population in some colonies.
 
1. What everyone else said.

2. At least at some times and some places, with some people, being Roman Catholic was more important than race. France, in particular had a a definite strand of opinion that if you were rc, spoke French, and had a decent education, that you WERE French. Alexandre Dumas was mixed race, and it was so unimportant that hardly anyone remembers the fact. Was France perfect that way? Certainly not, and they replaced racial chauvinism by cultural chauvinism, rather than being tolerant.

But to be 'English' you really had to have white skin.
 
Definitely a result of the difference between settler colonies in British North America and the economic colonies of the French and Spanish. Where the British had economic colonies with lots of single young men out to get money like the Spanish had rather than families arriving as settlers you see much more mixing. Early British India seems like a good example with East India Company employees having Indian wives and mixed race children fairly often.
 
Before Vitamin-D fortifying, would northerly locations like New England be unhealthy for blacks? I don't know, I'm just asking.

New England isn't that far north. It's on latitude with Portugal/Spain, which had a fairly large slave population during this period (which totally vanished due to interbreeding). Free blacks seemed to live just fine in London as well, despite being even further north. It seems if there was any health concerns caused by Vitamin D, they were no worse (and probably less than) concerns whites had regarding Malaria in subtropical climates.

Regardless, slaves were present throughout colonial New England. It's just that slaves had no vital economic importance, and due to the climate not being unhealthful for Europeans, white indentured labor (which was cheaper) worked just as well, so every town had a scattering of black slaves, rather than a large number.
 
I find it interesting to note that - on the Casta graphic on pg 1 - the child of a Castizo and a Spaniard was considered a Spaniard. So you could have an Indian great-grandparent, and still be considered Spanish.

To me, that reflects the fact that a lot of the early conquistadors who made it into the Spanish nobility - and formed the Latin American ruling class - had left offspring by their aristocratic Aztec/Incan wives who, three generations later, would have been at risk of being permanently relegated from the ruling class under stricter rules, despite their subsequent 'whitening'.

It's interesting that it's that proportion - one eighth Indian - which indicates that the rules would have been drawn up three generations after the initial conquest, by the descendants of those conquistadors who, while trying to emphasise their Spanishness, weren't prepared to let their Indian ancestry be used against them.

Bit like the Pocahontas Exception in Virginia.

Planter 1: "Hell yeah, we should put all the Injuns on reservations!"
Planter 2: "Er... you're descended from Pocahontas, aren't you?"
Planter 1: "Ah, yeah. Ah, OK... well, we'll make it so that if you're one sixteenth Injun, you're OK. That just adds character to a family tree..."
 
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