Chess and Race in the Global Middle Ages

Abstract

Medieval European representations of non-White people are often perceived in two primary roles, limited to negative, subservient figures, such as slaves and executioners, or exotic status symbols, like saints and rulers. By focusing on the game of chess, this article instead casts light onto another kind of encounter in which peoples hailing from different lands could engage in a ludic contest as equals. This study draws on interdisciplinary evidence combining literary and visual representations of gaming with material evidence from surviving medieval chess sets. The first part explores the cosmological perspective by which the chess board could encompass the whole world, and the chess pieces, its peoples. Through this, it illuminates the racialized processes by which chessmen were constantly reinterpreted and investigates what the pieces tell us about medieval perceptions of color and the human body. The second strand shifts the attention from the chess pieces to the chess players. Ranging from European examples to Persian and Arabic manuscripts, it explores diverse visual strategies through which chess contests facilitated cross-racial interaction. I argue that in this highly intellectualized war game, dark-skinned players were able to challenge and triumph over the socially dominant personae with lighter skin by demonstrating intellectual prowess. This article highlights the game of chess as a hitherto overlooked resource for intellectual exchange between people of different skin colors, which ultimately contributes to a more nuanced understanding of race-making processes and cross-cultural interaction in the emerging field of the Global Middle Ages.

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