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this post was submitted on 30 May 2026
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During the 17th century, all sources were non-US.
The concept of whiteness originated in the context of the slave trade from Africa to the New World and the enslavement of indigenous americans by the Spanish empire. According to anthropologist Irene Silverblatt, white, black and brown were used to described colonisers, slaves and colonised as far back as the 17th century by spanish colonisers in Latin America.
Swedish biologist Carl von Linné proposed the four coloured race scheme (black, brown, yellow, white) in 1785.
I am, however, not aware of any italian sources or discussions before the 19th century. There then are for example Antonio Bresciani's Dei costumi dell'isola di Sardegna comparati cogli antichissimi populi orientali (A Comparison of the Customs of the Island of Sardinia with Those of the Ancient Eastern Peoples) or Cesare Lombroso's works (e.g. L'uomo bianco e l'uomo di colore (The White Man and the Man of Color)). Interestingly, in these Italians consider themselves mostly "white" but attributed certain features (like black hair or bigger lips) as "foreign contamination" and higher crime rates in southern Italy to these "contaminations".
I was maybe not clear about it, by non-US source I was talking about historical studies and works not done by US Americans. So, no need to tell me that the US did not exist in the 17th century. Studying "whiteness" is a very US American thing, and the easiest way to prevent such bias is to look at work from elsewhere. But let's take that Michigan/North Carolinian anthropologisat for a second. What you describe there is purely external, concerning colonies, not the homeland.
From what you describe it does not appear, that even in Italy, people were classifying people as white and non-white amont the domestic, non-immigrant population. Not in the 17th century. Now, in the 19th century of course you have the rise of modern racism but even in those works you quote it sounds like they were not separating local non-immigrant population of Italian speaking regions into populated by white and non-white.
I mentioned several sources, two of them primary. Take the US anthropologist as an extra.
And none of them are differentiating the local non-immigrant population into white and black groups, are they?
Yes, they do as far as I read about them. Btw, I am not your damn personal search engine, nor your AI summariser. If you are interested in this, research it.