Racism and imperialism have been basic features of the modern world order from the start. They have often appeared together: colonial regimes were usually racially organized, and racist beliefs and practices usually flourished in colonial contexts. And they have also been conceptually linked in various ways: in particular, both racial and imperial thought have drawn heavily upon developmental schemes, in which designated groups have been represented not only as racially distinct but also as occupying different stages of development, with their degree of advancement often being understood to depend on their race and to warrant various forms of hierarchical relations. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, for instance, social Darwinists understood the major groupings of human beings to embody different stages in the biological evolution of the species, which were manifested in their different stages (more or less advanced) of social evolution, and which warranted relations of domination ranging from peonage at home to imperialism abroad.

In its various renderings – as enlightenment, civilization, progress, social evolution, economic growth, modernization, and so forth – the conception of universal history as the ever-advancing development of human capacities has been fundamental to both the self-understanding of the modern West and its view of its relations to the rest of the world. During the nineteenth century, this took the form of a hierarchical ordering of races and cultures along developmental gradients ranging from savagery to civilization, from barbarity to modernity.