The Race Makers

Name: The Race Makers
Price: 49.99 AUD
Availability: PreOrder
ISBN: 9781908906632

A History of the Enlightenment’s Most Dangerous Legacy

Andrew S. Curran

$49.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Saqi Books
01 June 2026

Biography: historical, political & military; Social & cultural history; Philosophy; Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology; Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies; Political campaigning & advertising

In the early eighteenth century, Christianity began to lose its hold on the story of humankind. Yet centuries of xenophobia, religious intolerance and emerging biological ideas did not simply disappear. Instead, secular thinkers reshaped them as they looked to redefine what it meant to be human. By century's end, naturalists and philosophers had divided humankind into racial categories using methods associated with the Enlightenment era.

In The Race Makers, Enlightenment specialist Andrew S. Curran traces the emergence of race through thirteen pivotal figures, including Louis XIV, Buffon, Carl Linnaeus, Voltaire, David Hume, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant and Thomas Jefferson. From the gilded halls of Versailles to the slave plantations of the Caribbean, and from the court of the Mughal Empire to the drawing rooms of Monticello, Curran reveals how the pursuit of knowledge became entangled with

and often drove

systems of empire and oppression. The result is a bold reappraisal of the Enlightenment's most celebrated luminaries.

Combining rigorous scholarship with vivid storytelling, The Race Makers offers a sweeping and unsettling account of how modern concepts of race were born

and why they still matter.

By: Andrew S. Curran
Imprint: Saqi Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 26mm
Weight: 650g
ISBN: 9781908906632
ISBN 10: 1908906634
Pages: 512
Publication Date: 01 June 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Andrew S. Curran is the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University. His work explores the intersections of race, science and Enlightenment thought, and has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Time Magazine. He is the author of The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Era of Enlightenment; Who's Black and Why? (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.), nominated for an NAACP image award; and Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely, named one of the best biographies of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews, The Australian and The Irish Times.

Reviews for The Race Makers: A History of the Enlightenment’s Most Dangerous Legacy

‘[A] brilliant study … Curran concludes by spotlighting Black intellectuals of the era in a fascinating counter-history. A thorough and eminently readable dissection of a pernicious lie.’ * Publishers Weekly, Starred Review *