Racial historicism held sway in colonial cities while naturalism dominated the frontier

Evidence

By mid-century, claims to native historical immaturity and Euroinspired progressivism that constituted the content of racial historicism were infusing Anglo-colonial administrations from Calcutta to Cape Town. The emergence and impact of assertive racial theories of natural difference, by contrast, took their toll more readily outside of Cape Town’s provincialized urbanity. In the city, the seat of colonial government, the contre-histoire of Anglo-infused racial historicism identified above all with John Stuart Mill’s liberalism came to have some traction. Its influence, however, waned the further one traveled from the local metropole, itself a site of more or less robust mixture, as I have been arguing. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1414

Categorization

• XREF: Maps onto the metropole/periphery gradient familiar from settler-colonial and urban-sociology literatures; echoes the geography-of-knowledge theme in Goldberg’s broader project. — connects to: European historicism made racial difference explain subordination instead of colonial power. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 263; Urban Cape produced racial class distinctions independent of frontier dynamics. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1385; Liberal racial historicism held in cities while naturalist racism dominated frontiers — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1414 (+1 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1414