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The Imperialist Character

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Hannah Arendt
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Extract

Of the two main political devices of imperialist rule, race was discovered in South Africa and bureaucracy in Algeria, Egypt and India; the former was originally the hardly conscious reaction to tribes of whose humanity European man was ashamed and frightened, whereas the latter was a consequence of that administration by which Europeans had tried to rule foreign peoples whom they felt at the same time to be hopelessly their inferiors and in need of their special protection. Race, in other words, was an escape into an irresponsibility where nothing human could any longer exist and bureaucracy was the result of a responsibility that no man can bear for his fellow man and no people for another people.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , July 1950 , pp. 303 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1950

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References

* This article will be a part of a book on The Origins of Totalitarianism, to be published by Harcourt, Brace & Co. in the fall of 1950.—THE EDITORS.Google Scholar

1 Kipling, Rudyard, “The First Sailor” in Humorous Tales (1891).Google Scholar

2 In The Day's Work (1898).Google Scholar

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4 Cromer, Lord, “The Government of Subject Races” in Edinburgh Renew (January, 1908).Google Scholar

5 Curzon, Lord at the unveiling of the memorial tablet for Cromer, Zetland, op. cit., p. 362.Google Scholar

6 Quoted from a long poem by Cromer, , Zetland, , op. cit., p. 17–18.Google Scholar

7 From a letter Lord Cromer wrote in 1882, ibid., p. 87.

8 Lord Cromer, op. cit.

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10 From a letter Lord Cromer wrote in 1884, ibid., p. 117.

11 From a letter to Lord Granville, a member of the Liberal party, in 1885, ibid., p. 219.

12 From a letter to Lord Roseberry in 1886, ibid., p. 134.

13 ibid., p. 352.

14 From a letter to Lord Roseberry in 1893, ibid., pp. 204–205.

15 From a letter to Lord Roseberry in 1893, ibid., p. 192.

16 From a speech by Cromer in Parliament after 1904, ibid., p. 311.

17 During the negotiations and considerations of the administrative pattern for the annexation of the Sudan, Cromer insisted on keeping the whole matter outside the sphere of French influence; he did this not because he wanted to secure a monopoly in Africa for England but much rather because he had “the utmost want of confidence in their administrative system as applied to subject races.” Quoted from a letter to Salisbury in 1899, ibid., p. 248.

18 Rhodes drew up six wills, the first already composed in 1877, all of which mention the “secret society.” For extensive quotes, see Williams, Basil, Cecil Rhodes (London, 1921)Google Scholar and Millin, S. Gertrude, op. cit., pp. 128 and 331. The citations are upon the authority of W. T. Stead.Google Scholar

19 It is very well known that the Rhodes “secret society” ended as the very respectable Rhodes Scholarship Association to which even not only Englishmen, but all members of the “Nordic Race,” such as Germans, Scandinavians and Americans, are admitted.

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24 “The Indian system of government by report was … suspect (in England). There was no trial by jury in India and the judges were all paid servants of the Crown, many of them removable at pleasure⃜ Some of the men of formal law felt rather uneasy as to the success of the Indian experiment. ‘If,’ they said, ‘despotism and bureaucracy work so well in India, may it not be that perhaps at some time it would be used as an argument for introducing something of the same system here?’” The government of India, at any rate, “knew well enough that it would have to justify its existence and its policy before public opinion in England, and it well knew that that public opinion would never tolerate oppression.” Carthill, A., The Lost Dominion (1924), p. 70 and 41/42 respectively.Google Scholar

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30 Idem.

31 How ambiguous and how difficult a process this must have been is illustrated by the following anecdote: “Lawrence had accepted an invitation to dinner at Claridge's and a party afterwards at Mrs. Harry Lindsay's. He shirked the dinner, but came to the party in Arab dresses.” This happened in 1919. Letters, p. 272, note 1.Google Scholar

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34 Letters, pp. 244, 447, 450. Compare especially the letter of 1918 (p. 244) with the two letters to Bernard Shaw of 1923 (p. 447) and 1928 (p. 616).Google Scholar

35 Bernard Shaw had apparently asked Lawrence in 1928 “What is your game really?” and suggested that his role in the army or his looking for a job as a night-watchman (for which he could “get good references”) were not authentic.

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42 As put by Sir Thomas Watt, a citizen of South Africa, of British descent.