Legends invented after the fact transform accidental imperial acquisitions into willed acts

Evidence

The exaggerated sense of responsibility in the British administrators of India who succeeded Burke’s “breakers of law” had its material basis in the fact that the British Empire had actually been acquired in a “fit of absent-mindedness.” Those, therefore, who were confronted with the accomplished fact and the job of keeping what had become theirs through an accident, had to find an interpretation that could change the accident into a kind of willed act. Such historical changes of fact have been carried through by legends since ancient times, and legends dreamed up by the British intelligentsia have played a decisive role in the formation of the bureaucrat and the secret agent of the British services. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 535

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt establishes the ‘legend’ as the mechanism by which accidental imperial possession is reinterpreted as deliberate will — a core conceptual tool for later colonial/imperial readings.
• XREF: Connects to the Islamophobia field’s use of Orientalism and invented tradition — how retrospective narratives legitimize power over the colonized.