The paternalistic policies regulating indigenous peoples were dependent upon contemporary racial and class theories persistent in European dialogue and culture, imported by settler societies:

In the absence of large noble and gentry populations, the original convict and primarily lower-class British settlers of the ‘white Dominions’ instinctively filled the vacuum. While the colonies afforded both new opportunities and the ability to transcend the regimented tiers of European society, the hierarchies did not vanish. Settlers found in indigenous peoples, Asian labourers and inferior immigrants alternatives to fill the lower rungs of class and racial hierarchies.

The concept of martial races – the belief that certain identifiable peoples or societies had an innate and exceptional capacity for war – was a construct engineered in India and exported across the British and other European empires. Martial race theories were derived from a pragmatic approach to internal state security, as a consequence of the 1857 Indian Mutiny and the subsequent shifting of sepoy ratios in the Indian Army of the British Raj to favour men from the Punjab, Nepal and the Northwest Frontier (Afghanistan).