Dominant minority

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A dominant minority is a minority group that has overwhelming political, economic or cultural dominance in a country despite representing a small fraction of the overall population (a demographic minority). Dominant minorities are also known as alien elites if they are recent immigrants.

The term is most commonly used to refer to an ethnic group which is defined along racial, national, religious or cultural lines and that holds a disproportionate amount of power.

Examples

Current:

• Sunni Muslims in Bahrain^[1][2][3]
• Muhajirs (Urdu-speakers) in Pakistan^[4][5]
• Americo-Liberians in Liberia ^[6][7][8]
• Alawites in Syria^[9]

Historical:

• Ahom Tribe in erstwhile Ahom Kingdom now modern-day Assam, India ^[10]
• Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt
• Greeks in Alexandrian Empire
• Greeks in Seleucid Empire
• Manchurians in the Qing Dynasty, China
• Mongolians in the Yuan Dynasty, China
• Mainland Chinese in Taiwan (Republic of China) during the martial law period
• Chagatai in the Mughal Empire, India
• Vikings in early Ancient Rus
• Norman French in the Norman Dynasty of England
• Brahmins in the caste system in India
• Indian Muslims in Islamic Empires in India during the Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent
• Austrians in the Austrian Empire
• Austrians and Hungarians in Austria-Hungary
• Turks in the Ottoman Empire
• Germans in what is now Baltic States during the Order, subsequent local German states, Swedish rule in Estonia and later the Russian Empire
• The Protestant Ascendancy in British-ruled Ireland
• White Anglo Saxon Protestants in the United States ("WASPs" may also be arguably a dominant majority population in the U.S, depending on the definition of "WASP." Taking into consideration the changing definition and expansion of the term "WASP" to include not only English Americans but Protestant Americans of Northern European and Northwestern European or Germanic origin, large American ethnic groups such as Protestant German-Americans, Ulster-Scots Americans, Scottish Americans, and Dutch Americans could all fall under the most inclusive definition of "WASP," thus forming a "WASP" majority population in the U.S.)
• White South Africans in apartheid South Africa
• Afro-Guyanese in Guyana
• White Namibians in South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia)
• White Zimbabweans in Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe)
• Arabs in the Zanzibar Sultanate
• Lebanese Christians before the Lebanese Civil War
• Dutch and Indo people in the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia)
• Anglo-Burmese, Burmese Indians, Chinese Burmese and Burmese Christians in British Burma (modern-day Myanmar)
• Pieds-Noirs in French Algeria
• Caldoches in New Caledonia
• Japanese in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo
• Catholics in French colonial Vietnam then divided as the three separate protectorates of Cochinchina, Annam and Tonkin
• Catholics in South Vietnam
• Walloons in Belgium before World War II
• Sudanese Arabs in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (modern-day Sudan and South Sudan)
• Arab Sunni Muslims in Saddam Hussein-era Iraq
• Swedes in Finland from the 14th to the early 19th century.
• Anglophones in Quebec prior and up until the Quiet Revolution

See also

• Middleman minority
• Minoritarianism
• Model minority
• World on Fire, a book that introduces the concept of "market-dominant minority"
• We are the 99%

Footnotes

References

• Barzilai, Gad. Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). ISBN 978-0-472-03079-8
• Gibson, Richard. African Liberation Movements: Contemporary Struggles against White Minority Rule (Institute of Race Relations: Oxford University Press, London, 1972). ISBN 0-19-218402-4
• Russell, Margo and Martin. Afrikaners of the Kalahari: White Minority in a Black State ( Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979). ISBN 0-521-21897-7
• Johnson, Howard and Watson, Karl (eds.). The white minority in the Caribbean (Wiener Publishing, Princeton, NJ, 1998). ISBN 976-8123-10-9, ISBN 1-55876-161-6
• Chua, Amy. World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (Doubleday, New York, 2003). ISBN 0-385-50302-4
• Haviland, William. Cultural Anthropology. (Vermont: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1993). p. 250-252. ISBN 0-15-508550-6.