Eighteenth-century classification reduced heterogeneous peoples to orderable types

Evidence

If the Cirebonese account only had survived, we would know the accused murderer as a high official of the Cirebonese court, and only by his title Ki Aria Marta Ningrat, not a personal name. The VOC records, however, angrily identify him as a Chinees – indeed that is the single most important piece of information about him that they convey. It is clear then that the Cirebonese court classified people by rank and status, while the Company did so by something like ‘race.’ There is no reason whatever to think that the accused murderer – whose high status attests to his and his ancestors’ long integration into Cirebonese society, no matter what their origins – thought of himself as ‘a’ Chinees. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 650 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial classification suppressed internal diversity under one inaccurate label; Colonial classifications imposed race categories that subjects never recognized as their own — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 650; Social forms must be abstracted from many historical instances — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 60 (+4 more)

Related

• Colonial classification suppressed internal diversity under one inaccurate label (similarity 0.91)
• Colonial classifications imposed race categories that subjects never recognized as their own (similarity 0.90)
• Colonial category of the native stopped at each colony’s drawn boundary. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Colonial classification suppressed internal diversity under one inaccurate label #corroborates (0.90)
• Colonial classifications imposed race categories that subjects never recognized as their own #corroborates (0.82) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 650
• Colonial categories formed in the same ambiguous space as scientific objects #expands (0.75)
• Social forms must be abstracted from many historical instances #expands (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 60