Bureaucratic aloofness is a more inhumane form of rule than open despotism.

Evidence

Aloofness became the new attitude of all members of the British services; it was a more dangerous form of governing than despotism and arbitrariness because it did not even tolerate that last link between the despot and his subjects, which is formed by bribery and gifts. The very integrity of the British administration made despotic government more inhuman and inaccessible to its subjects than Asiatic rulers or reckless conquerors had ever been. Integrity and aloofness were symbols for an absolute division of interests to the point where they are not even permitted to conflict. In comparison, exploitation, oppression, or corruption look like safeguards of human dignity, because exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed, corrupter and corrupted still live in the same world, still share the same goals, fight each other for the possession of the same things; and it is this tertium comparationis which aloofness destroyed. Worst of all was the fact that the aloof administrator was hardly aware that he had invented a new form of government but actually believed that his attitude was conditioned by “the forcible contact with a people living on a lower plane.” So, instead of believing in his individual superiority with some degree of essentially harmless vanity, he felt that he belonged to “a nation which had reached a comparatively high plane of civilization” and therefore held his position by right of birth, regardless of personal achievements. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 548

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines British colonial aloofness as a distinct governing mode — integrity that destroys any shared world between ruler and ruled.
• ADDENDUM: Directly scaffolds the hegemony/common-sense concept: aloofness naturalizes domination as birthright, ‘conditioned by contact with a lower plane’ — the colonizer unaware he invented a new form of government.