Question

Why did we see a shift in the idea of race in the 16th and 17th centuries?

Answer 1

Answer:

Race as a categorizing term referring to human beings was first used in the English language in the late 16th century. Until the 18th century it had a generalized meaning similar to other classifying terms such as type, sort, or kind. Occasional literature of Shakespeare’s time referred to a “race of saints” or “a race of bishops.” By the 18th century, race was widely used for sorting and ranking the peoples in the English colonies—Europeans who saw themselves as free people, Amerindians who had been conquered, and Africans who were being brought in as slave labour—and this usage continues today