About the book: 2017 / This monograph is a continuation of the large-scale project of the French historian Michel Pastoureau - the history of color in Western European societies, from Ancient Rome to the 18th century, which he began with research Europeans' relationship with the color blue. This time Pastoureau focuses on one of the most mysterious and controversial colors with a very difficult fate - black. The author undertakes a real detective investigation into the adventures, and often misadventures, of black people in Western European culture. The color of primordial darkness, the Black Death and the Black Knight, in the Middle Ages it migrated to the robes of monks, soon began to dominate the Protestant wardrobe, turned into the favorite color of lawyers and merchants, in the era of romanticism it turned out to be an integral sign of melancholy covers, and later a marker of elegance and chic and at the same time an indispensable attribute of the daily life of a city dweller.