Imperial ideology packaged British rule as altruistic world stewardship masking Rhodes-era reality

Evidence

What brings the little tale of the “First Sailor” so close to ancient foundation legends is that it presents the British as the only politically mature people, caring for law and burdened with the welfare of the world, in the midst of barbarian tribes who neither care nor know what keeps the world together. Unfortunately this presentation lacked the innate truth of ancient legends; the world cared and knew and saw how they did it and no such tale could ever have convinced the world that they did not “get anything out of that little job.” Yet there was a certain reality in England herself which corresponded to Kipling’s legend and made it at all possible, and that was the existence of such virtues as chivalry, nobility, bravery, even though they were utterly out of place in a political reality ruled by Cecil Rhodes or Lord Curzon. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 541

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘white man’s burden’ rhetoric famously dismantled by Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart, and to the construction-of-the-Other toolkit this reading is scaffolding.
• ADDENDUM: Directly complements the ‘Grafting & Growth’ article’s treatment of how imperial power naturalizes and mythologizes its own infrastructure/burden.