Most governance arrangements involve spatial units with highly unequal powers, for example, a feudal monarchy and its principalities, an empire and its colonies, a formal empire and an informal empire (or sphere of influence), a national government and its subnational entities, or a regional government and its local entities. In this situation, the dominant unit ( A ) usually enjoys some discretion about how to institutionalize its authority over the subordinate unit ( B ). An important element of this decision concerns how much authority should be delegated to the weaker unit. The authors simplify this dimension of governance along a continuum of “direct” and “indirect” styles of rule. Why, in some cases, does one find a relatively direct (centralized) system of rule and in others a relatively indirect (decentralized) system of rule? While many factors impinge on this decision, the authors argue that an important and highly persistent factor is the prior level of centralization existing within the subordinate unit. Greater centralization in B is likely to lead to a more indirect form of rule between A and B , all other things being equal. The authors refer to this as an institutional theory of direct/indirect rule. Empirical analyses of this hypothesis are applied to patterns of direct and indirect rule (1) during the age of imperialism and (2) across contemporary nation-states. The article concludes by discussing applications of the theory in a variety of additional settings.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/273A5AF537FBBD0D1A7C4959D3DE83A0/S0043887111000104a.pdf/div-class-title-an-institutional-theory-of-direct-and-indirect-rule-div.pdf

An Institutional Theory of Direct and Indirect Rule

By drawing on the current Marxist debate about the nature of the capitalist state, this article argues that the colonial state was obliged to be more interventionist than the mature capitalist state in its attempts to manage the economy, since colonies were distinguished by the way in which they articulated capitalism to local modes of production. This posed severe problems of social control, since the capitalist sector required the preservation of indigenous social institutions while also extracting resources from them. In early colonial Kenya this problem was mitigated by a rough compatibility between the needs of settler capital and the patronage exercised by African chiefs within a peasant sector which was expanded to solve the colonial administration's initial need for peace and revenue. The peasant sector was not destroyed, rather it was represented in the state, which never ceased thereafter to be plagued by the conflicts between the two modes of production over which it presided.

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Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895–1914

THE rise and fall of the settler societies in Africa - in Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia, and South Africa- is to be understood in relation to the global expansion and limited contraction of European capitalism, and in the light of the notions of underdevelopment and dependency.1 In strong contrast with the general experience of the Third World, settler societies show a capacity for independent capitalist development,2 built upon the heavy exploitation of African land and labour, and policies of economic nationalism externally. They thereby avoid relegation to the periphery of the world system as perpetual suppliers of raw materials, and as providers of dependent domestic markets for the manufactures of the metropole. In the process, the colon state assumes an ambivalent position in relation to imperialism in that it co-operates with the metropole, providing a secure and cheap occupation of a strategic area in return for political support and military aid. Settler societies represent a further exception to the general colonial situation in the appearance of relatively advanced class formations as the consequence of a more real capitalist development. These new urban and rural elements take shape in relation to permanent, total settler domination. Unlike the early decolonisation offered directly to new elites by imperialism elsewhere, the social classes in settler societies are constantly forced towards growth and militant action. The ultimate

Settler Colonialism: Economic Development and Class Formation

Colonial education has been controversial and widely divergent interpretations have been offered from contrasting ideological perspectives. British imperial education policy was highly contended during the colonial era and remains a contentious issue amongst many contemporary historians and a critical review of the historiography of the subject is long overdue. British colonial education policy starts in India in 1813, the intention being to promote both Oriental culture and Western science. But a former Director of Public Instruction, writing in the 1920s, claimed that education had done far less for Indian culture than for the material and political progress of India. More recent academic writing about the history of education in British India has been both intermittent and of mixed quality. To date, much of the criticism of British policy appears to have been motivated more by emotion rather than by detailed scholarly analysis and this account argues that more ‘plodding’ in archives is urgently needed ...

The historiography of British imperial education policy, Part I: India

Acknowledgements Glossary Introduction 1. From chronicle to history 2. Reform and revision 3. Romances of empire, Romantic orientalism and Anglo-India: contexts, historical and literary 4. The 'Mutiny' novel and the historical archive 5. Counter-insurgency and heroism 6. Imagining resistance Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index list.

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The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination

Lion Rampant: Essays in the Study of British Imperialism@@@England's Mission: The Imperial Idea in the Age of Gladstone and Disraeli 1868-1880@@@British Economic Policy and the Empire, 1919-1939

A. P. Thornton

Papers

Lion Rampant: Essays in the Study of British Imperialism@@@England's Mission: The Imperial Idea in the Age of Gladstone and Disraeli 1868-1880@@@British Economic Policy and the Empire, 1919-1939