Colonial racism generalized aristocratic superiority to justify empire and shore up domestic class rule

Evidence

Colonial racism was a major element in that conception of ‘Empire’ which attempted to weld dynastic legitimacy and national community. It did so by generalizing a principle of innate, inherited superiority on which its own domestic position was (however shakily) based to the vastness of the overseas possessions, covertly (or not so covertly) conveying the idea that if, say, English lords were naturally superior to other Englishmen, no matter: these other Englishmen were no less superior to the subjected natives. Indeed one is tempted to argue that the existence of late colonial empires even served to shore up domestic aristocratic bastions, since they appeared to confirm on a global, modern stage antique conceptions of power and privilege. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 571

Where racism developed outside Europe in the nineteenth century, it was always associated with European domination, for two converging reasons. First and most important was the rise of official nationalism and colonial “Russification.” As has been repeatedly emphasized[,] official nationalism was typically a response on the part of threatened dynastic and aristocratic groups—upper classes—to popular vernacular nationalism. Colonial racism was a major element in that conception of “Empire” which attempted to weld dynastic legitimacy and national community. It did so by generalizing a principle of innate, inherited superiority on which its own domestic position was covertly (or not so covertly) conveying the idea that if, say, English lords were naturally superior to other Englishmen, no matter: these other Englishmen were no less superior to the subjected races. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 96

Categorization

• XREF: Mechanism for how ruling classes exported innate-superiority ideology — the scaffold connecting domestic class hierarchy to colonial race hierarchy that Islamophobia readings will invert or extend. — connects to: British administrative aloofness fostered belief in permanent racial superiority over subject peoples; Imperialism politically emancipated the previously excluded bourgeoisie; Nobility’s conquest doctrine split France into two peoples before race-thinking emerged (+20 more)
• DEFINE: Explains Anderson’s mechanism by which official nationalism and colonial racism combined
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 571; Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 96

Broader Connections

• Colonial racism welded dynastic legitimacy to national community by universalizing inherited superiority #corroborates (0.88)