Geoffrey of Monmouth and Race

Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum abounds with human collectivities which he variously identifies as nationes, gentes, and populi. An abbreviated list of the text’s cast of collectivities includes Trojans, Britons, Romans, Saracens, Burgundians, Huns, Basques, Irish, Scythians, Picts, Scots, Flemings, Armoricans, Africans, Saxons, Normans, and Christians, a group that, for Geoffrey, is theoretically synonymous with the humanum genus, the “human race”, as a whole.1 This capacious representation of Britain’s history, in which the eponymous Britons develop a sophisticated civilization through interaction with a diverse set of peoples, revolutionized historical writing in Britain. We know that Geoffrey wrote for an elite Anglo-Norman audience in the early 1130s, and that his work, shedding (fictional) light on the mysterious lost history of the Welsh, was wildly popular among Welsh, Anglo-Norman, and, eventually, English audiences. The socio-political agenda of Geoffrey’s intervention in the Anglocentric histories of Britain available to Anglo-Norman newcomers in Britain, however, is less understood. Did Geoffrey’s text serve to denigrate the Welsh or to elevate their status? Did Geoffrey support Anglo-Norman colonialism in Britain or did he critique it? Was Geoffrey Welsh, Anglo-Norman, or both, and how did his own identity inform his historiography? While these questions cannot be answered simply, we may better understand Geoffrey’s intervention in the socio-political shifts of his time through analysis of the racial logics undergirding his work.2 Such an analysis reveals that Geoffrey