Misidentification – About the Dubious Relation Between the Sarmatian Ethnogenetic Myth and the Estate Proto-racism of the Nobility

Abstract

Recently, it can be frequently heard from Polish humanists and journalists that Sarmatism equals racism. Meanwhile – as this article tries to show – the source texts constituting the Sarmatian ethnogenetic myth, i.e. mainly 16th-century chronicles, mention the Sarmatian genealogy of all the
Poles and Slavs. It does not, however, mean that Polish nobility was free from the presentation of social differences in biological categories. To depict such phenomena, one should, firstly, apply the
concept of proto-racism (using the works of, i.a., R. Bernasconi, B. Isaac, and J. Ziegler) to avoid the mistake of being ahistorical, and secondly, note that the noble proto-racists, such as W. Nekada Trepka or W. Potocki, never directly referred (at least in their justifications of social divisions) to the Sarmatian myth, though they sometimes used other myths (e.g. about the peasantry being the descendants of Cain). For both authors, however, the supposed differences in blood, appearance, temper or even smell were important. The main thesis of this article states that although the issue of estate proto-racism of the nobility requires more systematic and profound research, the discussion about “Sarmatian racism” has rather doubtful foundations.