Indirect Rule - Interpretations

Interpretations

From the early 20th century, French and British writers helped establish a dichotomy between British Indirect rule, exemplified by the Indian princely states and by Lord Lugard's writings on the administration of northern Nigeria, and French colonial direct rule. As with British theorists, French colonial officials like Félix Eboué or Robert Delavignette wrote and argued throughout the first half of the 20th century for a distinct French style of rule that was centralized, uniform, and aimed at assimilating colonial subjects into the French polity. French rule, sometimes labeled Jacobin, was said in these writings to be based on the twin ideologies of the centralized unitary French government of the Metropole, with the French colonial ideology of Assimilation. Colonial Assimilation argued that French law and citizenship was based on universal values that came from the French Revolution. Mirroring French domestic citizenship law, French colonial law allowed for anyone who could prove themselves culturally French (the "Évolués") to become equal French citizens. In French West Africa, only parts of the Senegalese "Four Communes" ever extended French citizensip outside a few educated African elite. This was contrasted with British Indirect Rule, which never foresaw subject Protectorates becoming legally assimilated into "the home nations".

While making more subtle distinctions, this model of direct versus indirect rule was dominant in academia from the 1930s until the 1970s.

Academics since the 1970s have problematised the Direct versus Indirect Rule dichotomy, arguing the systems were in practice intermingled in both British and French colonial governance, and that the perception of indirect rule was sometimes promoted to justify quite direct rule structures.

Mahmood Mamdani and other academics have discussed extensively how both Direct and Indirect rule were attempts to implement identical goals of foreign rule, but how the "Indirect" strategy helped to create ethnic and racial cleavages within ruled societies which persist in hostile communal relations and dysfunctional strategies of government.

Some political scientists have even expanded the debate on how direct versus indirect rule experiences continue to effect contemporary governance into how governments which have never experienced colonialism rule.