Al-Hasan Muhammad al-Wazzan and John Pory

Race and the dawn of the British Empire

Abstract

This essay uses the judgement of Ibram M. Kendi that john Pory was the first racist who landed in northern America, to explore the significance of the work of the English translator of Leo Africanus's work on the georgraphy and history of Africa. It explores how and why Pory might have written as he did in adding a description of the peoples of Africa to Africanus's work and whether his thinking had the influence that Kendi claims. The essay further explores the colonial expansion of the British empire in the early seventeenth century to ask whether Pory's translation is significant as part of a wider expansion of British territories overseas. The essay seeks to think through the relationship between texts and historical actions in the light of the structural analysis of Marshall Sahlins.