A System of Commands: the Infrastructure of Race Contact

Abstract

In general, men govern other men badly. Most governments prove inefficient, inspire cynicism, and practice physical and psychological cruelty in dozens of small (and sometimes large) ways. To those inside an ideology, tireless energy must be spent convincing non-believers to accept the ideology as being in their interest. Non-democratic governments often use unprincipled power to achieve their ends; democracies often use the principled abuse of power, in order to persuade those who do not share the principle of democracy that they must. Certainly the imperialism of a democratic nation differs from that of a totalitarian one; less certainly, but frequently, native peoples could see that this was so, and on the whole preferred the empires of the democracies. This was a practical, not a moral, judgment based on the greater range of options open to native peoples when democratic governments worked through the mechanism of the collaborator, as for example the United States in the Philippines and the British in Nigeria did.

Men do not allocate a secondary and subordinate place to other men without developing a contempt for them.

A. P. Thornton, Doctrines of Imperialism (1965) p. 158