Racial ideology entered English statecraft through governing India, not the colonies

Evidence

But the important thing is that we see a long-range (30 years!) policy, consciously formulated and pursued, to turn ‘idolaters,’ not so much into Christians, as into people culturally English, despite their irremediable colour and blood. A sort of mental miscegenation is intended — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 363 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Colonial racism was a major element in that conception of ‘Empire’ which attempted to weld dynastic legitimacy and national community. It did so by generalizing a principle of innate, inherited superiority on which its own domestic position was (however shakily) based to the vastness of the overseas possessions, covertly (or not so covertly) conveying the idea that if, say, English lords were naturally superior to other Englishmen, no matter: these other Englishmen were no less superior to the subjected natives. Indeed one is tempted to argue that the existence of late colonial empires even served to shore up domestic aristocratic bastions, since they appeared to confirm on a global, modern stage antique conceptions of power and privilege. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 571 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: England’s imperial geography forced race into its nationalism as a linking device; Britain deliberately pursued cultural conversion while excluding colonial subjects by race — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 363; British rule deliberately fanned caste and communal divisions in India (+3 more)

Related

• Britain deliberately pursued cultural conversion while excluding colonial subjects by race (similarity 0.87)
• Abolition without a universal rights frame seeded England’s racial doctrines (similarity 0.85)
• British administrative aloofness fostered belief in permanent racial superiority over subject peoples (similarity 0.85)
• Britain transplanted its nation through colonization rather than building a multi-peopled empire (similarity 0.82)
• Colonial racism generalized aristocratic superiority to justify empire and shore up domestic class rule (similarity 0.82)
• Feudal concepts reaching lower classes made English race-thinking inheritance-obsessed (similarity 0.81)
• The modern race concept was modeled on aristocratic caste ideas (similarity 0.80)
• Stereotypes become dominant colonial ideology only once empire gains material power (similarity 0.80)
• Race-thinking supplied a natural aristocracy to replace the feudal nobility (similarity 0.80)
• England’s imperial geography forced race into its nationalism as a linking device (similarity 0.79)
• Nobility’s conquest doctrine split France into two peoples before race-thinking emerged (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Britain deliberately pursued cultural conversion while excluding colonial subjects by race #qualifies (0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 363
• British rule deliberately fanned caste and communal divisions in India #expands (0.75)
• Colonial racism generalized aristocratic superiority to justify empire and shore up domestic class rule #complicates (0.72) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 571
• Colonial race was judged by conduct and affiliation rather than appearance #qualifies (0.72)
• British administrative aloofness fostered belief in permanent racial superiority over subject peoples #expands (0.72)