British colonial officials claimed Orientals were incapable of self-government

Evidence

You may look through the whole history of the Orientals in what is called, broadly speaking, the East, and you never find traces of selfgovernment. All their great centuries—and they have been very great—have been passed under despotisms, under absolute government. All their great contributions to civilization—and they have been great—have been made under that form of government. Conqueror has succeeded conqueror; one domination has followed another; but never in all the revolutions of fate and fortune have you seen one of those nations of its own motion establish what we, from a Western point of view, call self-government. That is the fact. … Using examples like this, taken from a 1910 speech made by Lord Balfour— the former British prime minister, experienced member of Parliament, and colonial administrator in India, Egypt, and southern Africa—Said demonstrated how deeply the themes of knowledge and power ran within the imaginations of the men working to create and maintain the British empire. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 67

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: British liberals infantilized Indians to justify denying them democratic rights; The idea that Eastern peoples cannot self-govern developed in the Enlightenment and persisted. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 360; Balfour denied Orientals any history of self-government (+2 more)