Colonial discourse projected an invented Jewish identity onto unknown peoples worldwide

Evidence

Nonetheless, it is clear from this analysis that the imposition of the invented identity of a known other on colonized peoples in the form of the Jew or the Moor with attendant invented languages, cultures, and religions was a feature of orientalist colonial discourse. This imposition not only involved colonial countries like Britain and America but others such as France and Germany and served imperial needs throughout the world from Japan to Quebec from Peru to Zululand. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 340 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

A hitherto unobserved feature of colonial discourse is the astonishing way in which a construction of Jews, quite unrelated to any objective feature pertaining to the Jews of the time, was used throughout the world as a means of explicating unknown or little-known peoples of wildly differing characteristics. This construction arose in part because past Europeans were so imbued with the Bible that it was the first thing they turned to when in doubt, and thus the ethnography of the Israelites was the most available. It arose also because Western and particularly Protestant missionaries longed for the return of the Christian Messiah, before which long-awaited event Jews had to be found in every corner of the globe; thus Jews were “invented” in the most remote regions to facilitate the Second Coming. Finally, it arose as a means of favoring certain “superior” peoples in the colonial enterprise of divide and rule. This stratagem, particularly in the African context, was a way of suggesting that anything fine or noble came from outside, from Europe or the Middle East. Thus many peoples who appeared to have a more advanced way of doing things or who had “noble” physical or social features were perceived of as coming from elsewhere—very frequently from “biblical lands.” The factors that were adduced in this discourse vary from place to place and from time to time but they generally include such features as the supposed similarity of certain languages to Hebrew and, from the seventeenth century on, the physical and moral resemblance of many different peoples to Jews. Religious features supposedly resembling aspects of the religious practices of Israelites were found among just about every society on earth. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 306 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

One part of the discourse imposed upon new and unknown societies was a construction of the “other” that colonists had brought with them from Europe. This, in essence, was to try and explain indigenous religions as well as indigenous racial types from the analogy of religious systems and racial types that were known to them. To medieval Europe the two most obvious forms of the religious other were Jews and Muslims and to some extent this binary construct continued into the twentieth century. The myth of the Moor (synonymous with Muslim in the European discourse) was one of its aspects and stood more or less for wild tribalism and a state of fairly but not entirely irredeemable savagery. The Jew represented a number of features, of which we should note a bucolic traditional way of life, a certain nobility, a more developed intelligence than was to be found among other groups and so on. Frequently the idealization of groups who are given these invented identities contained reflections of the fine qualities of the colonist; here alterity merges with introspection. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 340 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: European colonial discourse imposed invented Jew and Moor identities on peoples globally — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 340; European views of Jews shaped and were projected onto colonial peoples; A biblical template of Jews explained unknown peoples and served colonial rule (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• European colonial discourse imposed invented Jew and Moor identities on peoples globally #corroborates (0.97) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 340
• Colonial Europeans projected Jewish identity onto distant peoples to legitimate divide and rule #corroborates (0.95) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 306
• Colonists explained new peoples by mapping Europe’s Jew and Moor stereotypes onto them #corroborates (0.95) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 340
• Muslims and Jews were the template for categorizing New World indigenous peoples. #corroborates (0.92) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 154