Instrumental imperial rule generated hallmark indifference and aloofness toward subjects

Evidence

The outstanding similarity between Rhodes’s rule in South Africa and Cromer’s domination of Egypt was that both regarded the countries not as desirable ends in themselves but merely as means for some supposedly higher purpose. They were similar therefore in their indifference and aloofness, in their genuine lack of interest in their subjects, an attitude which differed as much from the cruelty and arbitrariness of native despots in Asia as from the exploiting carelessness of conquerors, or the insane and anarchic oppression of one race tribe through another. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 547

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt here characterizes the distinctive attitude of imperialist bureaucracy: treating subjects as means yields a specific affect of indifference distinct from both despot cruelty and conqueror carelessness.
• XREF: Defines an affect/psychology of colonial administration that later Islamophobia scholarship traces in modern ‘counter-terrorism’ governance of Muslim populations.