In the 1723 Journal of a Voyage up the Gambia , an English narrator describes the native translators vital to the expedition's success as being «Black as Coal.» Such a description of dark skin color was not unusual for eighteenth-century Britons—but neither was the statement that followed: «here, thro' Custom, (being Christians) they account themselves White Men.» The Complexion of Race asks how such categories would have been possible, when and how such statements came to...
