ABSTRACT
When two or more ethnic/racial groups live together in a society, they have almost always maintained ethnic stratification. The dominant group has controlled subordinate minority groups, both politically and socioeconomically. Social scientists interested in ethnic and race relations have recognized that certain alien groups have played an intermediary role in host societies between the dominant group and subordinate minorities. They use the concept “middleman minorities” or “middleman entrepreneurs” to characterize these minorities’ intermediate economic role, bridging what they call the “status gap” in particular societies. Since the 1960s, the concept has been popularly used in the social science literature (Rinder 1958-59; Blalock 1967: 79-84; Eitzen 1971; Loewen 1971; Bonacich 1973; Zenner 1991). The literature has often cited the following groups as typical cases of middleman minorities:
Jews in the Medieval Europe, Poland, and other Eastern European countries before World War II, and in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century; Chinese in Southeast Asian countries (Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia); Indians in West and South Africa; Parsees and Jains in the caste-ridden Hindu India; Christian Armenians in the Middle East; Scots in the British Isles; and Koreans in the United States during the 1970s through 1990s. The literature also shows that middlemen entrepreneurs exhibit the following three characteristics that mutually influence one another: (1) concentration in trade and other types of occupations involving the intermediary economic role such as money-lending, (2) subjection to host hostility, and (3) ethnic solidarity. This essay examines historical cases of middleman minorities, their central characteristics, and the major causal factors contributing to this minority adaptation based on a literature review.
