Colonial origin theories were used to deny Africans land rights

Evidence

In 1827 an English settler in the eastern cape noted that the Xhosa had religious traditions that included “some Mahometan and Jewish rites.” A similar definition was provided by Robert Godlonton, editor of the Graham’s Town Journal, who argued that it was possible to prove the origin of the Xhosa by reference to their language, which he said clearly showed “traces of its eastern origin in the frequent occurrence of words which are plainly of Hebrew or Arabic extraction.” He concluded that as their forefathers had been intruders into the area the Xhosa did not belong in South Africa. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 329

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how ‘scientific’ origin theories — biblical genealogy for the Hottentots, claimed Semitic/Arab descent for the Xhosa — were instruments of dispossession, not idle scholarship. The Xhosa case shows the brutal payoff: proving non-indigeneity justified their removal.
• DEEPTHINKING: The logic here is striking: Europeans who themselves framed Africans as cursed, subhuman descendants of Ham simultaneously declared those same peoples to be recent intruders so that the land could be claimed by the actual colonizers. The taxonomy was never coherent because its only function was dispossession.
• XREF: connects to: Colonial powers opposed universal human rights extending to their own subjects — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 268; Irish land dispossession paralleled African colonial land theft in scale — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 128; Colonial authorities confined Africans to arid reserves in lands they had not previously inhabited — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists:…, 17 (+2 more)