Colonialism, Race, and Modernity: Representations of the Berlin Conference in the Peruvian Political Imaginary, 1884-1900

• In Event: Colonialidad/Decolonialidad y Raza

Abstract

How was Blackness constructed in Peru by the end of the nineteenth century? How were racist assumptions about Afro-Peruvian subjects reinforced in the public sphere? My work proposes looking at social commentary on the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, a historical event dubbed the "Scramble of Africa." In a country where, unlike Brazil, African descendants made up a minority of the population, I argue that representations of the gathering of Western powers in 1884-1885 and the work of Henry M. Stanley, which remained influential among Peruvian intellectuals, reconfigured nineteenth-century discourses on barbarism, civilization, and modernity.

Author

• Mario E Tumen, St. Lawrence University