ABSTRACT
The struggle for justice thus became partly a contest over race itself. Like ‘ethnicity’, an even less precise category, race has no basis in biology but has taken shape historically through racist practices. Hardly new in the late nineteenth century, racial ideas gained purchase due to renewed imperial expansion after a hiatus of ‘free trade imperialism’ at mid-century. European powers sought to remedy the systemic crisis through a drive for formal colonies known as the New Imperialism, as competition for territory and markets from other aspiring imperial powers rendered free trade imperialism unfeasible. Changes in geopolitics, many of them emanating from the colonized empire or ex-colonies such as the United States, stimulated the ascendancy of racial discrimination in the Fin De Siècle. Colonial governments and settlers fought, subordinated and discriminated against indigenous people and sought to exclude in-migrants from other colonies such as India.
