Colonial law invented ethnicity by politicizing previously cultural communities

Evidence

“The very category ‘native’ was legally dismantled as different groups of natives were set apart on the basis of ethnicity. From being only a cultural community, the ethnic group was turned into a political community.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 39 (#expands, via linked claim)

In Africa, Mamdani explains, the subject races were many. The list extends to the Asians of East Africa, the Indians and “Coloured” of South Africa, the Arabs of Zanzibar, and, of course, to the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi (28). The terrible history of the political divisions that, naturalized by colonial rule, sedimented as cultural distinctions that were later to lead to what has been called “ethnic violence” in Rwanda, is what Mamdani describes and, more importantly, explains and interrogates. Colonial rule produced political identities, identities that it proceeded to naturalize. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 45 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: British colonial rule created ethnoracial divisions where pluralistic communal life existed. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 556; Colonial policing hardened fluid status groups into fixed racial identities. — Erin K. Jenne and Promise Frank Ejiofor, Ethnopopulism and genocidal…, 50; Colonial discourse projected an invented Jewish identity onto unknown peoples worldwide (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial law transmuted cultural communities into political ones #expands (0.98) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 39
• Colonial rule manufactured political identities that it then naturalized as culture #corroborates (0.95) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 45