ABSTRACT
Imperial formations generated, reproduced and administered inequality. Imperial and colonial imaginaries, practices and experiences were crucial to the ways in which equality and inequality became thinkable, demonstrable, justifiable and contestable. This chapter addresses creation, reproduction and administration of inequality in imperial and colonial contexts as interrelated dynamics. It offers historical illustrations of the ways in which imperial formations actively participated in the enactment of economic, political (including legal) and sociocultural mechanisms that induced multifaceted inequalities between individuals and communities across the globe, through intense land expropriation, fiscal and labour extraction, and extensive discriminatory practices. The use of various politics of difference, that is, distinct, competing idioms and repertoires of power, empires enacted different dynamics of incorporation and differentiation of multiple ethnic groups within specific societies.
