If civilizations can be ranked, so can people.

In the previous column, we examined how historical sequence hardened into civilizational replacement. Europe increasingly positioned itself as mature, advanced, and representative of history’s culmination. Africa was placed earlier in time — not absent, but developmental.

Once hierarchy operates at the level of societies, it presses downward into anthropology.

Civilizational ranking eventually requires a theory of capacity.

The question shifts from:
Which civilization is advanced?
to
Which people are capable?

Early modern European thought did not initially deny African humanity outright. Such a claim would have sat uneasily with Christian affirmations of shared human origin and natural law traditions that emphasized common descent.¹ Instead, difference was reframed as development.

The issue was not whether Africans were human. It was whether they were equally mature as humans.

A growing strand of early modern political philosophy linked reason to freedom and political authority. John Locke, for example, tied property rights and legitimate government to rational self-governance.² Capacity for disciplined reason became increasingly associated with civil and political maturity.

If reason is the basis of freedom, then perceived deficiencies in reason justify limits on autonomy.

European travel literature and missionary accounts frequently described Africans as childlike, impulsive, or governed more by passion than deliberation.³ These depictions varied by author and region, but the developmental framing is clear: Africa was not inhuman; it was immature.

The language of childhood is revealing.

Children are human.
Children possess dignity.
Children may be educated.

But children are not entrusted with sovereignty.

To frame a people as developmentally childlike is to normalize rule without overt cruelty. Control becomes guardianship. Authority becomes responsibility. Subordination becomes tutelage.

This was the anthropological turn of civilizational hierarchy.

By the eighteenth century, Enlightenment stadial theory articulated these distinctions more explicitly. Adam Ferguson described societies as progressing through stages of development from “rude” to “civilized.”⁴ Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, including Adam Smith and William Robertson, embedded human difference within evolutionary social models.⁵ These theories did not yet fully biologize race, but they ranked societies along a developmental continuum.

At the same time, philosophers such as David Hume and Immanuel Kant introduced sharper hierarchical distinctions. Hume’s notorious footnote in “Of National Characters” suggested innate intellectual differences among races.⁶ Kant’s 1775 essay “Of the Different Races of Human Beings” attempted to classify humanity in ways that assigned Europeans a higher developmental status.⁷

These writings did not emerge in isolation. They were extensions of a prior sequencing logic.

If Africa was earlier in civilizational time, Africans could be described as earlier in developmental maturity. Civilizational chronology became anthropological gradation.

Race, in this context, did not initially require the denial of humanity. It required stratification within humanity.

Africans could be said to possess souls — but not sovereignty.
They could be baptized — but not entrusted with rule.
They could be educated — but not treated as equals in capacity.

Graded humanity does not require calling someone non-human. It requires positioning them lower on a developmental scale.

Once humanity is tiered, hierarchy appears natural.

If a people are less capable of rational self-rule, governance by others can be framed as necessary. If a people are closer to instinct than reason, discipline can be described as corrective. If a people are immature, domination can be narrated as preparation.

Violence rarely presents itself as violence. It presents itself as improvement.

Importantly, not all European thinkers embraced biological determinism, and resistance to racial hierarchy existed even within Enlightenment thought.⁸ But the dominant trajectory increasingly moved toward naturalizing difference.

What began as chronological sequencing hardened into anthropological ranking.

Civilizational hierarchy had become human hierarchy.

Once humanity is graded, hierarchy seeks moral sanction.

The next column will examine how Scripture was increasingly enlisted to stabilize these distinctions — how hierarchy, once introduced into anthropology, was sanctified through religious interpretation and made durable across generations.

Notes (Chicago Style)

1. R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996).

2. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (London, 1689).

3. Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964); V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).

4. Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Edinburgh, 1767).

5. Ronald L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

6. David Hume, “Of National Characters” (1753).

7. Immanuel Kant, “Of the Different Races of Human Beings” (1775).

8. George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

Bibliography

Curtin, Philip D. The Image of Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.
Ferguson, Adam. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Edinburgh, 1767.
Fredrickson, George M. Racism: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Hume, David. “Of National Characters.” 1753.
Kant, Immanuel. “Of the Different Races of Human Beings.” 1775.
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. London, 1689.
Meek, Ronald L. Social Science and the Ignoble Savage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Mudimbe, V.Y. The Invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Soulen, R. Kendall. The God of Israel and Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.