Telling the History of the Rise and Fall of People of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe through Paintings

Multiethnic diversity was a central dimension of everyday life in eighteenth-century European societies.  Yet, the history and memory of populations that were new Europeans of color by the mid-eighteenth century have been suppressed and denied in historical writing since the nineteenth century, either through silence or denigration of the legacies of eighteenth-century celebrities of color.  At present scholars of European history typically take an “images of the ‘other’” approach and diversity is treated as something Europeans came into contact with in colonial spaces beyond Europe.  This in reality is another form of historical denial.  In contrast, this paper will use a series of eighteenth-century paintings by masters from the period to offer a history focused on the rise and fall of a presence of people of color in Europe.  It will trace migration to Europe from three geographical zones, namely the directly from Africa, the Americas and the Ottoman lands of the Mediterranean.  It will then use images to discuss their integration and rapid social mobility in European societies in addition to the late eighteenth-century reaction against this immigration.  Finally, Francisco de Goya’s The Third of May will be used to discuss the first racial genocide in modern history under the Napoleonic regime, when people of color were rounded-up and placed in depots of death or as de Goya’s famous image shows, targeted for execution on the spot.