TWO MODELS FOR CLASSIFYING INDIVIDUALS, PEOPLES AND NATIONS – AMERICAS, 15TH-19TH CENTURIES

Abstract

This article investigates the systems for classifying individuals, peoples, and nations in the Americas between the 15th and 19 th centuries, with a focus on the social and political experiences of the Iberian worlds. The object of study revolves around two major historical models of biological and social classification and hierarchy. The first, based on the notion of “quality”— which encompassed origin, family and religious lineage—as well as the legal “condition” of individuals, predominated in the modern world, structuring the social order. The second model, which gained greater prominence from the late 18th century onward, is linked to the ideas of civilization, race, color, and miscegenation, associated with the rise of scientific racialism and nationalist projects. The article aims to understand how these models succeeded one another, but also how they intertwined, becoming arenas of political and cultural dispute in the processes of nation-state formation. The central hypothesis is that Ibero-America not only received classificatory models developed in Europe but also played an active role in their re-elaboration and circulation, even influencing their global reconfiguration. The study is grounded in a broad documentary and bibliographic corpus, including administrative records, legal texts, illustrated treatises, political and scientific vocabularies, as well as examples drawn from specific historical experiences, such as that of Portuguese America. By tracing the conceptual mutations of the categories of “quality” and “condition” and their shift toward notions such as “race” and “progress,” the article contributes to understanding the historical foundations of inequality and social classification in Ibero-American societies.