Untrue. There was a lot more to it than that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fuchs
Indirect rule merely means that the lower and medium level bureaucracy are hired foreign personnel.
From p. 199 of the article previously linked:
Quote:
While the British were scrupulous in their respect for traditional methods of selection of chiefs, the French, conceiving of them as agents of the administration, were more concerned with their potential efficiency than their legitimacy. We need not wonder then that as a young French administrator, after serving in Senegal and Dahomey, M. Robert Delavignette should have been astonished, on his way to duty in Niger, to find that the British political officer in Kano actually called on the Emir when he had business with him and paid him the compliment of learning Hausa so that he could speak to him direct.
Which is to say that there was more to administration of the British Empire than compliance from the natives; there was also cooperation with. To say that the British were the more powerful party in the indirect rule relationship is stating the sort-of obvious (“sort-of” because the when of the relationship[s] as well as the scale do matter) but that didn’t put the British in complete control of their Empire in any other–than–simplified sense.
I think that regardless of works, deeds, and intent
Quote:
Originally Posted by
carl
Ganulv:
I have a question. I think that for an empire to endure and be truly successful, like the British and Roman, for example, they have to bring some benefits to the subjects. It can't all be just suppressing and taking. That doesn't cut it over the long run. The empire has to benefit the subject people in some way, internal peace and order, increased opportunity for trade, suppression of suttee, things like that. I also think that is why Isreal, which runs a mini-empire, has continuous trouble. All they offer the subject people is suppression and humiliation. There is no great benefit.
What do you think?
there are no guarantees. :p From the stuff I can claim either a good (American Indian relations with the British, French, and U.S. & Latin American relations with the Spanish) or passing (West African relations with the French and British) knowledge of my impression is that at some point the folks in the periphery are going to expect comity of treatment or reasonable privileges. One does have to wonder about the good faith of empires in general given how many of them stood on principle rather than renegotiate the status quo. What would it have cost the British Empire to have really and truly extended political enfranchisement to the Founding Fathers? What would it have cost the French to have extended liberté, égalité, and fraternité worth calling such to the Arab inhabitants of Algeria?