English law enslaved non-Christians but spared Turks and Moors out of imperial caution
Evidence
West African slaves and Indians became the irredeemable subjects of Christianity, exempt from its assimilationist and universalist ideology in the context of English colonialism. Turks and Moors, however, escaped this fate, very likely because England was not in a position to challenge the Ottoman Empire and various North African Muslim powers. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 210
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Power geometry: the racism produced by Islamophobia tracks the empire’s actual military/economic capacity to dominate the other — connects to how the pre-state trading literature frames institutions emerging where one power can actually coerce.
- QUESTION: The 1671 Virginia law quoted at 209 suggests the motivation was not theological consistency but geopolitical feasibility — worth chasing how exactly this exception was administered and enforced in practice.