Indirect rule

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Indirect rule is a type of European colonial policy as practiced in large parts of British India (see Princely states) and elsewhere in the British Empire (including Malaya), in which the traditional local power structure, or at least part of it, is incorporated into the colonial administrative structure. (Note: Not all British colonies were under indirect rule, e.g. Burma experienced a direct rule.)

Contents

1 Rationale
2 Cases

2.1 British Empire
2.2 Other European powers

3 Sources and references

Rationale

Once a territory has been sufficiently pacified and colonial sovereignty firmly established, it is often too burdensome, or even physically impossible (given distances, poor communications, difficulties in recruiting etc.), for the colonial power to maintain an extensive presence of military, police and civil officials, especially if the subject nations are much more populous than the conquering country is.

Unless the choice is made, as the Phoenician and the Portuguese (pioneering explorers having first choice of vast colonial territories) did, to leave most of the hinterland virtually unoccupied (at the risk of having it taken over by a rival power) and essentially limit effective colonization to the commercially more attractive areas, the authorities have to farm out significant parts of normal administration. One option is to turn to the private sector; corporations and missionary churches take on a good deal of responsibility for roads, utilities, housing, education, health, et cetera. As these organizations draw their recruits mainly from the conquering countries, this may not provide enough human resources. Therefore, tapping in to the ruling class that ruled the countries before they became colonial property is a very attractive and pragmatic move. In the case of the chartered company, nearly all initiative and efforts in a certain zone of activity is handed over to a private initiative, that is thus destined to become sort of a state within the charter-giving state.

Another motive is a matter of political tactics: the conquerors want the cooperation of the former ruling class (for personal profit and safeguarding much of the dynastic heritage) of the country in order to prevent the risk of a rebellion led by these former rulers.

Cases

British Empire

Its main application was in British Asia, in hundreds of princely states, first under the HEIC (mainly the Indian subcontinent and Burma, but also in strategic regions on the route thereto, mainly coastal Persian Gulf states), later in the succeeding Crown Colonies and protectorates.

Typically a British Governor and council of advisors made laws for each colony, but local rulers loyal to the Governor kept some of their traditional authority.

It was also used in other (generally tribal) parts of the British Empire, mainly in black Africa and the Pacific.

Other European powers

For the other major Asian system, in the Dutch East Indies (present Indonesia), largely superceding the Portuguese (which had previously experimented with the system) in the Indian Ocean, see Regentschap.
Even Belgium found its only colony, the Belgian Congo (started as king Leopold II's 'personal' Congo Free State), later de facto extended, under League of Nations mandate and subsequent UN Trust, with the formerly German Rwanda and (B)Urundi, far to large to govern without indirect rule through the native chefs = (stam)hoofden (the French and Dutch words for Chiefs)
Spain didn't feel much for indirect rule through usually heathen native aristocracy, which seemed anathemate to its rigid Inquisition-type of Catholicism and absolute moanarchy, and therefore chose rather to eliminate most of the ruling classes (even whole tribes of Indians, partially accidental as by contagious infections), but ended up the first great power to lose most of its colonies, in Latin America - mainly to the Creoles, and after having great chunks taken from its internally to weak empire by European rivals, mainly the British. Their stand-alone has proved a losing choice!
Although its goes against their 'jacobine' tradition of meddling omnipresence of the republican authorities, even more then under royal absolutism, the French too found their colonial empire too vast to be ruled without recourse to some indirect rule. This was least the case in the 'popular colonies' many metropolitan French families migrated to, as in the Maghreb country of Algeria (these pied noir were the main reason that colony was so late to attain independence, and only after an extremely bloody war).
The German (originally Prussian) Reich, proverbially even stricter in its organisation, was too late to carve out an empire worthy of its weight in Europe, but in its haste to move in quickly didn't shrink either from some indirect rule, as in Tanganyika (now the continental part of Tanzania).

Sources and references

[WorldStatesmen- see each present country]

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