Colonial censuses turned diverse Europeans into a white race by 1911.

Evidence

An astonishing variety of ‘Europeans’ were enumerated right through the colonial era. But whereas in 1881 they were still grouped primarily under the headings ‘resident,’ ‘floating,’ and ‘prisoners,’ by 1911 they were fraternizing as members of a (white) race’. It is agreeable that up to the end, the census-makers were visibly uneasy about where to place those they marked as ‘Jews.’ — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 682

Categorization

• XREF: The census congealing ‘Europeans’ into a white race is the race-thinking mechanism that scaffolds readings of colonial racialization and its Muslim subjects. — connects to: Racial categories were administratively imposed on people formerly counted as white in the 1760s; The Negro and whiteness were invented in Europe through scholarly effort; Racial hierarchy and whiteness were invented inside Europe before modern capitalism (+5 more)
• SHARE: The ‘Jews’ throwing census-makers into confusion is a telling detail for any scholar of colonial classification.

Related

• Three-quarters of colonial-era classified Europeans had partial native origin (similarity 0.84)
• Racial categories were administratively imposed on people formerly counted as white in the 1760s (similarity 0.83)
• Colonial policy disputes centered on how race should be assessed, not what race is (similarity 0.80)
• Local Africans rejected racial categories until Europeans imposed them (similarity 0.80)
• Mixed-race populations’ visibility enabled early modern racism (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial officials proposed legal recognition of European status based on visible racial traits (similarity 0.79)
• Recognition by a European alone conferred racial status in the Indies (similarity 0.79)
• Color stratification encodes fine-grained social status within colonized societies. (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial census categories could define away inconvenient poverty by racial reclassification (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial use of ‘black’ did not necessarily denote African descent (similarity 0.79)
• Late-eighteenth-century Cape recordkeeping made white the default superior racial category. (similarity 0.79)
• Racial difference had to be manufactured before Europeans seemed alien (similarity 0.79)
• The category of the Negro was fabricated in the West, not Africa (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial classifications imposed race categories that subjects never recognized as their own (similarity 0.78)
• Race-thinkers needed anthropology to classify Europeans into distinct hereditary types (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Racial categories were administratively imposed on people formerly counted as white in the 1760s #corroborates (0.82)
• The Negro and whiteness were invented in Europe through scholarly effort #corroborates (0.80)
• Colonial officials proposed legal recognition of European status based on visible racial traits #contradicts (0.80)
• Three-quarters of colonial-era classified Europeans had partial native origin #expands (0.78) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 896
• Racial hierarchy and whiteness were invented inside Europe before modern capitalism #complicates (0.75)
• Colonial administrators were certain about racial character but uncertain how to name the population #expands (0.72)
• The link between whiteness, race, and Christianity was founded in the Middle Ages. #expands (0.72)