Whiter than White

Abstract

Almost all scholarly attempts to define colonial states rely, to varying degrees, on the existence of a division between the rulers and the ruled. For most post-colonial historians, this division in colonial Asia was marked primarily by conceptions of racial difference.¹ This was apparent in many formal bureaucratic structures and employment practices in which certain powers and positions were reserved for white Europeans. But while this was usually an institutionalised bifurcation evident in the formal organisation of colonial states’ uppermost branches, it is less certain how this hierarchical racial division was experienced in everyday life.² With subordinate officials, like Inspector Pakiri, evidently capable of subverting the authority of British superior officers and enacting the state for their own ends, it might legitimately be asked whether the white upper echelons of the colonial administration were relevant in everyday deltaic life at all. Were the daily personal politics of local government, as George Orwell evocatively characterised them, always ‘impervious to the European mind, a conspiracy behind the conspiracy, a plot within a plot’?³

In Burma … the people looked up to the officials and recognized that they were better off under authority than if they attempted to govern themselves. Above all, they knew that in the last resort they could rely on the justice and firmness of British officers.

Herbert Thirkell White, A Civil Servant in Burma (1913)

The whole affair, as far as I can see, is one network of intrigue and villainy. It seems impossible to believe anybody. It all comes from dealing with Burmans.

Cecil Champion Lowis, The Machinations of the Myo-Ok (1903)