Imperial informal influence beat treaties by remaining flexible and hidden

Evidence

Cromer started by recognizing that “personal influence” without a legal or written political treaty could be enough for “sufficiently effective supervision over public affairs” in foreign countries. This kind of informal influence was preferable to a well-defined policy because it could be altered at a moment’s notice and did not necessarily involve the home government in case cf difficulties. It required a highly trained, highly reliable staff whose loyalty and patriotism were not connected with personal ambition or vanity and who would even be required to renounce the human aspiration of having their names connected with their achievements. Their greatest passion would have to be for secrecy (“the less British officials are talked about the better”), for a role behind the scenes; their greatest contempt would be directed at publicity and people who love it. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 551

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the informal imperial ‘personal influence’ model as an alternative to treaty-based rule, with anonymity and secrecy as its staffing requirements.
• XREF: Connects to Weberian bureaucracy as rule-by-experts, and to Arendt’s later analysis of how bureaucracy conceals responsibility. — connects to: Unequal treaties prefigured neoliberal empire without formal territorial control — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 262