Race-Making Festivities in Brandenburg-Prussia, 1652–1750.

This article examines how the four generations of Hohenzollern rulers who transformed Brandenburg into the kingdom of Prussia employed Black men at their courts and in their armies from the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, using their presence in court festivities, artistic commissions, and military bands to symbolize and perform racial difference and hierarchy. Brandenburg-Prussia, the only member of the Holy Roman Empire to engage in the Atlantic slave trade through the Brandenburg African Company (1682–1721), integrated representations of Black people—both actual attendants and white performers in black-up—into elaborate court spectacles such as carousels, ballets, and masquerades, thereby participating in early modern "race-making" that linked notions of human difference to princely lineage and state power. The article highlights how these performances adapted older European traditions of displaying alterity while reflecting Brandenburg-Prussia's global ambitions and its unique position as a latecomer to Atlantic commerce and slavery. Ultimately, the study argues that such courtly representations contributed to shaping racial categories and hierarchies in early modern Europe, situating European nobility within a global racialized order.