The modern race concept was modeled on aristocratic caste ideas

Evidence

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Gobineau’s race theory translated caste decline into civilizational decay; Race-thinking supplied a natural aristocracy to replace the feudal nobility; Feudal concepts reaching lower classes made English race-thinking inheritance-obsessed (+4 more)

Related

• Race-thinking supplied a natural aristocracy to replace the feudal nobility (similarity 0.90)
• Feudal concepts reaching lower classes made English race-thinking inheritance-obsessed (similarity 0.86)
• Gobineau’s race theory translated caste decline into civilizational decay (similarity 0.85)
• Colonial racism generalized aristocratic superiority to justify empire and shore up domestic class rule (similarity 0.83)
• Racial ideology entered English statecraft through governing India, not the colonies (similarity 0.80)
• Nobility’s conquest doctrine split France into two peoples before race-thinking emerged (similarity 0.80)
• British administrative aloofness fostered belief in permanent racial superiority over subject peoples (similarity 0.79)
• Gobineau invented racism by projecting his caste’s decline onto civilization’s fate. (similarity 0.79)
• European race thinking originated as aristocratic status anxiety (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• European racialism originated in intra-European caste ordering, not color #corroborates (0.85)
• Colonial racism generalized aristocratic superiority to justify empire and shore up domestic class rule #expands (0.82) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 571
• Indian anticaste thinkers linked caste and racism over a century ago #corroborates (0.80)
• Ambedkar defined caste as an enclosed, endogamous class distinct from race and class #qualifies (0.78) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 297