Indirect rule governed through native leaders who relayed colonial policy and exacted obedience

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: Perham here gives the operative mechanics of how ‘indirect rule’ actually worked — rule by instructing native leaders to enforce colonial policy.
• XREF: connects to: Local warlords under apartheid played classic indirect-rule politics — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 592; Tribal classification served rulers by manufacturing compliant chiefly authorities. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 571