Cromer embodied a class of self-sacrificing British bureaucrats who governed colonies

Evidence

Lord Cromer, secretary to the Viceroy and financial member in the pre-imperialist government of India, still belonged in the category of British dragon-slayers. Led solely by “the sense of sacrifice” for backward populations and “the sense of duty” to the glory of Great Britain that “has given birth to a class of officials who have both the desire and the capacity to govern,” he declined in 1894 the post of Viceroy and refused ten years later the position of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Instead of such honors, which would have satisfied a lesser man, he became the little-publicized and all-powerful British Consul General in Egypt from 1883 to 1907. There he became the first imperialist administrator, certainly “second to none among those who by their services have glorified the British race”; perhaps the last to die in undisturbed pride: “Let these suffice for Britain’s meed—/ No nobler price was ever won, / The blessings of a people freed / The consciousness of duty done.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 545

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Islamophobia field’s critique of the ‘white man’s burden’ official discourse — bureaucratic self-image of duty as domination.