National institutions checked the worst abuses of colonial rule

Evidence

To the salutary restraint of national institutions and politicians we owe whatever benefits the non-European peoples have been able, after all and despite everything, to derive from Western domination. But the colonial services never ceased to protest against the interference of the “inexperienced majority”—the nation—that tried to press the “experienced minority”—the imperialist administrators—“in the direction of imitation,” namely, of government in accordance with the general standards of justice and liberty at home. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 357

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the field’s debates on whether metropolis-based institutions mitigated or licensed colonial violence. — connects to: Eighteenth-century Privy Council review was haphazard and tolerated most colonial statutory deviations. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 226