Racial exclusion could prefigure colonial-native relations within a single nation

Evidence

Boulainvilliers proposed that his fellow-noblemen deny a common origin with the French people, break up the unity of the nation, and claim an original and therefore eternal distinction. Much bolder than most of the later defenders of nobility, Boulainvilliers denied any predestined connection with the soil; he conceded that the “Gaules” had been in France longer, that the “Francs” were strangers and barbarians. He based his doctrine solely on the eternal right of conquest and found no difficulty in asserting that “Friesland …has been the true cradle of the French nation.” Centuries before the actual development of imperialistic racism, following only the inherent logic of his concept, he considered the original inhabitants of France natives in the modern sense, or in his own terms “subjects”—not of the king—but of all those whose advantage was descent from the conquering people, who by right of birth were to be called “Frenchmen.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 437

Categorization

• XREF: This “two nations in one territory” origin story connects directly to later Islamophobia readings on how immigration and racialized outsiders are narratively constructed as foreign invaders within the nation-state.
• DEFINE: Establishes the early conceptual link between conquest-right, nobility privilege, and proto-race-thinking, before the term race exists.