[xg15]

> All of this reeks of the entrenched (pre-) Victorian British worldview, where it is natural and appropriate for the "more civilized" to look down on the "savages" of "lower order", as if a moral ladder like that were as clear as daylight.

For a long time that literally was the dominant philosophy in the west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being

[PearlRiver]

This is what the Chinese thought too.

Of course such ideas never explain gun powder or Genghis Khan but nobody ever said racists are smart.