Colonial indirect rule depended on native leaders to transmit and enforce foreign policy

Evidence

The basic difficulty [in carrying out “indirect rule”] is one that will appear in its different aspects—education, land-tenure, economic production, law—in all our coming discussions. It is (and here I speak especially of Africa) the great gap between the culture of rulers and ruled. In administration, reduced to its simplest terms, it means that for the most part the people do not understand what we want them to do, or, if they understand, do not want to do it… . [W]e endeavor to instruct the leaders of the people in the objects of our policy, in the hope that they will, by their natural authority, at once diffuse the instruction and exact the necessary obedience. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 849

Categorization

• DEFINE: Quoting what appears to be a colonial administrator, Robinson captures the definition of indirect rule: rule through native leaders expected to diffuse instruction and exact obedience.