British administrative aloofness fostered belief in permanent racial superiority over subject peoples

Evidence

Colonial racism was a major element in that conception of ‘Empire’ which attempted to weld dynastic legitimacy and national community. It did so by generalizing a principle of innate, inherited superiority on which its own domestic position was (however shakily) based to the vastness of the overseas possessions, covertly (or not so covertly) conveying the idea that if, say, English lords were naturally superior to other Englishmen, no matter: these other Englishmen were no less superior to the subjected natives. Indeed one is tempted to argue that the existence of late colonial empires even served to shore up domestic aristocratic bastions, since they appeared to confirm on a global, modern stage antique conceptions of power and privilege. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 571 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial racism generalized aristocratic superiority to justify empire and shore up domestic class rule — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 571; Preexisting race-thinking gave racism a false veneer of respectability; Racial ideology entered English statecraft through governing India, not the colonies (+2 more)

Related

• Colonial racism generalized aristocratic superiority to justify empire and shore up domestic class rule (similarity 0.88)
• Racial ideology entered English statecraft through governing India, not the colonies (similarity 0.85)
• Feudal concepts reaching lower classes made English race-thinking inheritance-obsessed (similarity 0.84)
• Race-thinking supplied a natural aristocracy to replace the feudal nobility (similarity 0.83)
• Colonial administrators misread their own invented rule as natural racial superiority (similarity 0.81)
• Britain deliberately pursued cultural conversion while excluding colonial subjects by race (similarity 0.80)
• The modern race concept was modeled on aristocratic caste ideas (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial racial superiority must be actively believed to be maintained (similarity 0.79)
• Nobility’s conquest doctrine split France into two peoples before race-thinking emerged (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Colonial racism generalized aristocratic superiority to justify empire and shore up domestic class rule #corroborates (0.88) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 571
• Preexisting race-thinking gave racism a false veneer of respectability #expands (0.70)