Colonial Power Quotes

His Majesty’s dominions, on which the sun never sets.

… there is a notion of exchanging Hong Kong for a more healthy colony.

[Criticizing the American colonists:] How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

British Empire

Imperialism is a paper tiger.

If France does not seize this most beautiful part of America and set up a colony, [...] the English colony which is becoming quite large, will increase to such a degree that, in less than one hundred years, it will be strong enough to take over all of America and chase away all other nations.

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

Shall we, who have laid the proud British lion at our feet, now be afraid of his whelps?

You have to look at what the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous people says which is free and prior informed consent. Now, if you say 'we're going to build a pipeline, what does it take for us as the colonial power of Canada to make you agree?' That's not free, prior and informed consent, that's coercion.

First there was the changing of the guard outside the British Residence; then, through the cast-iron doors pricked in gold with the monogram of Victoria Regina, the high commissioner’s black Rolls Royce slowly emerged. On either side of the car as it slowly advanced rode a detachment of the King’s Horse…The procession, led by officers of the Egyptian mounted police, continued as far as the small cathedral of Saint Mary…where Bishop Gwynne of Cairo and Khartoum…waited in a chasuble and alb to receive the high commissioner…It was a world of ceremony complete unto itself, and the patriotic convictions served up in Bishop Gwynne’s sermons inspired the congregation with a feeling of everlastingness and certainty of fate.

From Tangiers to Alexandria, the entire African coast of the Mediterranean, with the exception of the great Libyan desert, belongs either to France or to England. Italy, the Mediterranean nation par excellence, is virtually excluded from the control of the Mediterranean; she is imprisoned and besieged in her own ocean.

The Great White Father now calls you his brother, not his children.

If the Philippines secure their independence after heroic and stubborn conflicts, they can rest assured that neither England, nor Germany, nor France, and still less Holland, will dare to take up what Spain has been unable to hold.

The Old Country must wake up if she intends to maintain her old position of pre-eminence in her Colonial trade against foreign competitors.

[Referring to Africans:] Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim Gun, and they have not.

The skills you need to fight the colonial power and the skills you need to gain independence are not necessarily the same you need to run a country.

It was intended as a bill of coercion, to oblige the people of New England to submit to the just power of the mother country.

When the Industrial Revolution started, the amount of carbon sitting underneath Britain in the form of coal was as big as the amount of carbon sitting under Saudi Arabia in the form of oil, and this carbon powered the Industrial Revolution, it put the 'Great' in Great Britain, and led to Britain's temporary world domination.

The painful truth may be that Zimbabwe, the youngest of Africa's former colonies, has simply followed where the continent has led, treading the well-worn path beaten out of the lie that taking power from the colonialists and delivering democracy to the people are one and the same.

I'm a Third World person. I grew up in an occupied zone [Greenville, South Carolina] and had to negotiate with the superpower, really the colonial power.

It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.

It is with deep grief I watch the clattering down of the British Empire with all its glories and all the services it has rendered to mankind.

If imperialism is not banished from the country, China will perish as a nation. If China does not perish, then imperialism cannot remain.

In fact, it was the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century. The largest, most powerful force ever set forth from Britain or any nation.

If you drop a perpendicular from the frontier of Tunis, through Lake Chad to the Congo, you could say that the greatest part of the territories bounded by this line and the sea … are French, or destined to be included in France’s sphere of influence. We have a vast domain which it is for us to colonize and make fruitful …