Colonial government normalized its intervention by first describing the colonized population’s character as defective

Evidence

Nevertheless the Oriental, en soi, was incapable of appreciating or understanding himself. Partly because of what Europe had done to him, he had lost his religion and his philosophie; Muslims had “un vide immense” within them; they were close to anarchy and suicide. It became France’s obligation, then, to associate itself with the Muslims’ desire to defend their traditional culture, the rule of their dynastic life, and the patrimony of believers. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 694 (#expands, via linked claim)

This is not because colonial officials did not write about them. On the contrary, kings and governor generals, regional officers, and social engineers of all sorts were obsessed with their welfare, their homes, morals, speech, rearing, and resentments—and, most importantly, their vengeful and potentially subversive inclinations. The fact that they led no revolts and produced no martyrs to their cause had little bearing on the highpitched fears that eddied around them. As we shall see in the chapters that follow, intense debates about what was conceived as the repressed rage of Inlandsche kinderen point elsewhere: to what Doris Sommer in another context calls the “foundational fictions” of colonial rule. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 58 (#complicates, via linked claim)

I am talking about millions of men in whom fear has been cunningly instilled, who have been taught to have an inferiority complex, to tremble, kneel, despair, and behave like flunkeys. — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 59 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The colonized were cast as both evil and childlike to justify western intervention; Colonial powers justified intervention by portraying colonized subjects as incapable of self-understanding — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 694; Colonial rule systematically instills an inferiority complex in the colonized — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 59 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial powers justified intervention by portraying colonized subjects as incapable of self-understanding #expands (0.92) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 694
• Colonial officials fixated on subject populations they feared far more than evidence warranted #complicates (0.73) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 58
• Colonial rule systematically instills an inferiority complex in the colonized #complicates (0.72) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 59
• Colonization so transformed colonized peoples that pre-colonial personality descriptions no longer apply #complicates (0.71) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 346