Colonial Control Quotes

The unspeakable Turk should be immediately struck out of the question, and the country he left to honest European guidance.

As colonial puppeteer and successful restorer of Russia as imperial superpower, Mr. Putin is Stalin's consummate heir.

Treat the native as a child and withdraw the franchise.

It the British System is the most gigantic system of slavery the world has yet seen, and therefore it is that freedom gradually disappears from every country over which England is enabled to obtain control.

It is racist, and it was racist when it was created. The Indian Act controls, or seeks to control, the lives of all indigenous people in a way that you and I would never accept.

[Revolts] will break out again, and if they do you will not be able to control them…. I cannot understand how you can expect slaves to be quiet, who are reading English newspapers.

Existing colonial empires rest upon insecure foundations. There seems, indeed, something unnatural in the spectacle of seven million Dutch ruling over fifty million Malays.

Part of the main plan of imperialism... is that we will give you your history, we will write it for you, we will re-order the past...What's more truly frightening is the defacement, the mutilation, and ultimately the eradication of history in order to create... an order that is favorable to the United States.

Unless we are prepared to retire from South Africa immediately and unconditionally—unthinkable of course—we must restore our authority where it has been defied.

Instead of exporting what they perceived to be rational, modern, humane government to their colonies, the British often found themselves propping up deeply unattractive and corrupt princelings and client rulers because this was the cheapest way of maintaining control.

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.

The stronger the hold we are able to keep here the better the inhabitants will be pleased... They can't conceive an independent Arab government. Nor, I confess, can I. There is no one here who could run it

It is impossible to reduce, or, at least, to hold a distant country against the wishes and efforts of its inhabitants.

If we allowed those who are leading Irish politics unlimited power… we should have to begin by conquering Ireland, if ever we had to fight any other power.

England must either lose her colonies or destroy them in the effort to hold them, and in either event there would be the same loss of trade, the same decay in manufactures, and the same destruction of national credit.

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjugated races to possess arms.

American imperialism has always been the imperialism that has been frightened of speaking its name. Now it's beginning to do so. In a way, it's better. We know where we kneel.

When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British parliament was advised by an artful man [Sir William Keith], who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people. That it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them. But that they should not do it openly; but to weaken them and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.

You know what we did at Jerusalem. Do exactly the same. Send for the Turkish Wali [Civil Governor] and tell him to carry on, giving him the extra police he requires.

The tyrant Bolivar and his indecent supporters ought to annex Peru, and place this rich country under the control of Columbia, but he has made a mistake. The Spaniards are the only alternative who can avert our ruin.

While Indians were in a state of at least semi-independence, there did not seem to be any great necessity for interference.

The thinking was that so long as the British kept our basic documents in their hands and so long as they kept the formal right to change them, changes in our system would be careful and deliberate.

In every sphere the Europeans must retain the right to rule the country and to keep it a white man’s country.

In the early colonial period the commerce of Mexico was monopolized by Spain, and this has been the explanation given by most writers for the backwardness of Mexico. They do not seem to know that England monopolized the commerce of her American colonies more strictly than ever Spain did hers. The problem, therefore, is to explain why, as soon as the English colonies were independent, they began sending their ships all over the world, while Mexico could not find any better use for her independence than closing the country to foreign trade by a prohibitive tariff.

The pre-war empire had been sufficiently informal and sufficiently cheap for Parliament to claim authority over it without having to concern itself too much about what this authority entailed. The post-war empire necessitated a much greater investment in administrative machinery and military force. This build-up of control had to be paid for, either by British taxpayers or by their colonists.