Colonists explained a loyal minority’s superiority by inventing exotic origins for it

Evidence

Let me turn my gaze to Burma. The first “authentic” Jew to spend any time in Burma, as far as I know, was a certain Shlomo Reinmann, a native of Galicia, who arrived in Rangoon in 1852 with the British army. Within five years, however, there were sufficient Jews (Baghdadis and Bene Israel from India) serving the Raj to warrant the construction of a small synagogue in the city, the Matzmiah Yeshurun congregation. But long before this actual Jewish presence had been established Western missionaries active in the country had formed the view that a particular Burmese ethnic group was itself of Jewish extraction. The Burmese group subjected to this reading of local traditions was the Karen people. Why were the Karens supposed by missionaries and others to have anything to do with Jews? Part of the answer, no doubt, has to do with the mechanics of colonization. In much the same way as I have discussed in the case of the Chi’ang, a particular, often “loyal,” minority was picked out and was perceived to have strikingly “superior” characteristics. A way of explaining the group’s “superior” ability was to imagine their origins outside the locus of the inferior majority and to place it in some sense within the sacred history of the colonial power. Thus it was that “the loyal Karens of Burma,” as one British official of the Bengal Civil Service called them in a book of that name, achieved a special status in British eyes. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 322 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial powers explained subject minority superiority by inventing Israelite descent; Colonial powers assigned superior minorities Jewish origins to explain their perceived excellence — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 322; Colonial officials invented ideologies of racial superiority when confronted by evidence of native competence. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1171 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial powers explained subject minority superiority by inventing Israelite descent #corroborates (0.95)
• Colonial powers assigned superior minorities Jewish origins to explain their perceived excellence #corroborates (0.93) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 322