france-pittoresque.

Voltaire (When) justified slavery
and posted a staunch racism
(From "Essay on the manners and spirit of nations", published in 1756
and "Belgian Journal of Philology and History," published in 1993)
Published Sunday, July 19, 2015, by EDITOR
 
Basis of racist theories of the nineteenth century polygenism, model in which human races descended from several couples and not one as claimed by the Church, is forbidden in the eighteenth century by several emblematic figures of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire: invoking to establish a strict hierarchy of the human race, the philosopher is in 1756 the defender of white superiority and justifies slavery bluntly, before denouncing it three years later in Candide adding in extremis within the passage of his work on "Surinam negro"

.http://www.france-pittoresque.com/spip.php?article12652