British colonization transplanted a national structure rather than expanding an imperial one.

Evidence

The national structure of the United Kingdom had made quick assimilation and incorporation of the conquered peoples impossible; the British Commonwealth was never a “Commonwealth of Nations” but the heir of the United Kingdom, one nation dispersed throughout the world. Dispersion and colonization did not expand, but transplanted, the political structure, with the result that the members of the new federated body remained closely tied to their common mother country for sound reasons of common past and common law. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 351

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt here defines the crucial distinction between empire (Roman model, absorbing many peoples under one law) and colonial transplantation (Greek model, dispersing one nation across the globe) — a distinction that frames how the nation-state later relates to its colonies and racialized others.