Imperial rule often granted subjects more individual freedom than successor nation-states did.

Evidence

There’s a good deal of confusion in much of the world, and particularly in the Middle East, between two different words and two different concepts: free­ dom and independence. In many parts of the region the two words are used as if they were synonyms. They are not synonyms. They mean very different things. And much of the world has now learned painfully not only that it is possible to have one without the other, but in many situations the two appear to be mutually exclusive. Some of the empires gave far greater freedom in the sense of individual rights to their subjects than were ever accorded by the independent states that arose on the ruins of empires. Nowadays some rather bitterly define independence as the right to be kicked in the teeth by a compatriot instead of being hit on the head by a foreigner. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 824

Categorization

• XREF: Inverts the standard decolonization narrative and connects to claims about how Western empires legitimized themselves; feeds the Islam-West representation cluster by qualifying the ‘oppression = empire’ premise. — connects to: Human rights associations prompt high-capacity monarchies to grant controlled political amnesties. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 391
• SEED: Angle for an essay: how anti-colonial nationalist historiography suppresses the record of imperial-era civil liberties versus what the successor states actually delivered.