When did whiteness begin? Was its rise inevitable? In this powerful history, John Broich traces the emergence, evolution and contradictions of white supremacy, from its roots in the British empire, to the racial politics of the present. Focussing on the English-speaking world, he examines how ideas of whiteness connect to the history of slavery, Enlightenment thought, European colonialism, Social Darwinism and eugenics, fascism and capitalism. Far from being the natural order of things, Broich demonstrates that white supremacy is a brittle concept. For centuries, it has been constantly shifting, rebranding, and justifying itself in the face of resistance. The oft-repeated excuse that its architects were simply “men of their time” collapses under scrutiny. With brutal honesty, Broich exposes the lies embedded in the grim biography of an invented race. White Supremacy calls for a deeper understanding of the past, that we might undo its grip on the present.

‘Historians rarely offer such a thorough and powerfully accurate account of white supremacy in a digestible and succinct text as John Broich has written. White Supremacy: A Short History is a tremendous resource for scholars and students alike. Broich succeeds in taking readers through a journey over the centuries of racial thinking drawing their attention to horrors of white violence and debilitating proliferation of white supremacist ideology within the United States and Europe. Highly recommended.’

Tommy J. Curry - author of Another white Man's Burden

‘John Broich expertly distils a vast literature on race, slavery and imperialism into a brisk and bracing narrative which is impossible to ignore. White Supremacy is a wide-ranging, highly readable and impressively concise account of the toxic idea which continues to distort our world.’

Nicholas Guyatt - author of Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation

‘This is an excellent and much-needed book. It is a wonderful antidote to the raft of popular works on racism that concentrate on contemporary dynamics in a particular country, with only cursory historical perspectives. John Broich argues passionately that ‘white supremacy’ is an historical global category that was, and is, contingent, and can, therefore, be dismantled.’

James Renton - editor of Islamophobia and Surveillance: Genealogies of a Global Order