Colonial rule legally constructed the Tutsi as a nonindigenous alien race.

Evidence

In a process that has remained for the most part invisible, “the Tutsi were constructed by colonial ideology as well as law as nonindigenous Hamites,” a distinct “race … both civilizing and alien” (28, 89). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 46 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The sources of European colonialism, eo ipso located in the European homeland, were more or less the product of the same systems of power, be they British, French, Italian, Swedish, or Dutch. What made them exhibit certain difference in the way they conducted their colonialist projects was Latour’s Stone, a Stone that in turn assumed different forms, sizes, and qualities in various colonized spaces. There was no issue of agency here, but one of how to carve the Stone. Some stones were too hard for carving, and were accordingly smashed or, if small enough, pulverized into dust. Others were too big, and thus were split, carved, and redesigned. Obviously, Latour’s Stone in India was too large to be removed, leaving carving as the only option. In Amerindia, the Stone, having been split asunder by biological forces (influenza, typhus, cholera, and the like), became small enough for pulverization, keeping in mind that in the view of the Europeans, the Stone was simply not amenable to carving. In other words, it was not the thought structure that undergirded and governed colonialism that was the variable, but the feasibility of implementing its logic and values. The “natural” givens in the colonies thus determined the course and form of colonization. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 425 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A historical Tutsi rebel label evolved into a dehumanizing cockroach epithet for all Tutsis — Erin K. Jenne and Promise Frank Ejiofor, Ethnopopulism and genocidal…, 84; Hutu Power manufactured a unified Tutsi enemy spanning within and without Rwanda. — Erin K. Jenne and Promise Frank Ejiofor, Ethnopopulism and genocidal…, 65; Belgium instigated Rwanda’s ethnic massacres by switching favor from Tutsi to Hutu — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 901 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial ideology and law jointly constructed the Tutsi as nonindigenous civilizers #corroborates (0.97) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 46
• Local conditions, not colonial ideology, determined the form of colonization #complicates (0.76) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 425