In her essay, “Barbarian Moors: Documenting Racial Formation in Early Modern England,” Ambereen Dadabhoy observes, “contained within the term ‘Moor,’ then, is a geographic distinction, religious differentiation, and color consciousness” (34). She showcases the title page of George Sandys’s A relation of a journey begun an: Dom: 1610 (London 1615) as an example of the “visual rhetoric employed for Turks and Africans” (35). You have the 1652 version of that text in front of you now. In your group, analyze and consider how this version engages in early modern what Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields term “racecraft,” the process “racism produces race as a concept” (Thompson 8). What examples can you find in the book? Document and cite them. And on what terms might the book be constructing racial formations visually, rhetorically, and materially?
Sandys Travailes can be accessed here.
