Racial identity has been central to twentieth-century Western imagination. Yet, argues Frank Füredi, advocates of racial identity have long felt uncomfortable with the racialised global order they created.

In The Silent War, Frank Füredi provides a radical exploration of the origins of the Anglo-American race relations industry, arguing that its emergence was driven by a conservative impulse of damage limitation; white racial fears and the internal crisis of confidence of the Anglo-American elites helping to transform racial thinking into a defensive philosophy of race relations. Füredi reveals how this shift in the conceptualisation of race is reflected in the management of international relations and demonstrates how, by the 1940s, Western powers were reluctant to openly use the discourse of race in international affairs.

The Silent War examines the extent of the silent race agenda in the postwar era and helps explain why North–South affairs continue to be influenced by the issue of race.