Correlating Race and Caste in Colonial Burma

Abstract Scholars have made clear the impact of colonial governance on modern states’ racial, ethnic, and national identities. Colonial census efforts were a crucial tool in the creation and politicization of such identity categories. This article analyzes “race” definitions and classifications in the colonial censuses of British India from 1872 to 1931 to show how the challenges of defining race in Burma emerged, in part, because of the stepwise colonization of Burma through British India. Specifically, this article asks: What influenced the definitions of race in Burma? How were efforts at developing and understanding a racial schema in Burma shaped by the colonial landscape in which it was embedded? The article argues that colonial ideas about race in Burma developed out of an initial stage of racial classification and knowledge production in India, revealing the complexity of defining race under the influence of both European perceptions of racial difference and local perceptions of social boundaries in India. This article contributes to knowledge of how the creation and implementation of race categories and definitions is a process embedded in a web of colonial structures that extend beyond the colony-colonizer relationship.