From 'Chinese Colonist' to 'Yellow Peril': Capitalist Racialization in the British Empire

Main author: Ince, Onur Ulas
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-40759
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description The literature on “racial capitalism” exhibits a tension between the term’s evocative power and its conceptual imprecision. This article navigates this tension by developing the mid-level concept of “capitalist racialization,” which specifies the role of capitalist abstractions in the construction of racial hierarchies. I elaborate this notion around the racialization of Chinese migration in nineteenth-century Southeast Asia. I focalize the figure of the “Chinese colonist” as an index of the capitalist standards by which British observers ordered colonial populations in their reflections on imperial political economy. I argue that the racial stereotype of “the Chinese” as commercial, industrious, and “colonizing” people emerged from the subsumption of colonial land and labor under capital. Their “colonizing” capacity rendered Chinese migrants simultaneously an economic asset to the British Empire and a potential threat to the white world order. “Capitalist racialization” therefore highlights new inroads into the entwined histories of capitalism, racism, and empire.
format Journal Article
author Ince, Onur Ulas
author_facet Ince, Onur Ulas
authorStr Ince, Onur Ulas
author_letter Ince, Onur Ulas
title From 'Chinese Colonist' to 'Yellow Peril': Capitalist Racialization in the British Empire
publisher Cambridge University Press
publishDate 2023
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/40759/