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The Imperialist Character
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
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.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1950
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
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13 ibid., p. 352.
14 From a letter to Lord Roseberry in 1893, ibid., pp. 204–205.
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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
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30 Idem.
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