60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

lineages of racism in genocidal contexts 163
tocracy spawned a discourse of perpetual war, as the fi rst historicopolitical
discourse (as opposed to a philosophico-juridical discourse),
mythical and critical at the same time (Foucault [1976] 2003: 57).
Comte de Boulainvilliers (1658-1722) features prominently in Arendt’s
and Foucault’s outlines as a ‘founder’ of a discourse of ‘race’. In commenting
on Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise, Comte de Boulainvilliers
equates Spinoza’s conatus with the right of conquest. Every
society, he maintains, is formed by force or conquest. While not providing
a moral justifi cation of conquest, he holds that the passage of
time in social and political practice legitimates conquest:
It is certain that in common right all men are equal. It was violence
that introduced the distinctions of Liberty and Slavery, of
Nobility and Third Estate; but even though these have vicious
origins their practice has been established in the world for so long
that they have acquired the force of natural law. (Henri Comte de
Boulainvilliers: Essais sur la noblesse de France, Amsterdam, 1732;
quoted in Buranelli 1957: 481)
Only the separate caste of nobles, as descendants of the original conquerors,
can call themselves ‘Frenchmen’; only they, according to
Boulainvilliers, can rightfully claim authority in France. This descent,
imparted by blood and birth, rendered noble status inalienable;
it was adduced to motivate the claim of the nobility to a status as distinct
‘race’ (in a peculiar ‘race-thinking’ that predates, and is distinct
from, biologically based state racism). 8
This version of the right of conquest is based on the myth, propounded
by François Hotman in 1573, of the Frankish invasion of Romanoccupied
Gaul in the declining Roman Empire in the fi fth century
AD. In Boulainvilliers’ epic history, the invading Franks overthrew
the provincial power of the Gauls, divided the land among themselves,
became local overlords, each living on his portion of conquered
territory and holding the inhabitants as serfs:
It is evident that after this conquest there remained not a person
in the entire land who did not fall into the class of conqueror or
conquered, of Salian or Roman… In a word, the Gauls became
subjects, while the others remained masters and free men… It is
8 The distinction drawn by Hannah Arendt between ‘race-thinking’ and racism, and
their respective location within diff erent orders of knowledge and discourse, would
not support Beatrice Hanssen’s claim that Arendt attempted to ‘enlist the help of the
conservative, even reactionary, French nobiliary historian Boulainvillers’, as ‘one of the
precursors of Nazi race-thinking’ (2000: 100).