Pre-nineteenth-century empires ruled indirectly through autonomous regional power-holders.

Evidence

Before the nineteenth century, furthermore, large states and empires generally managed by means of indirect rule: systems in which the central power received tribute, cooperation, and guarantees of compliance on the part of subject populations from regional power-holders who enjoyed great autonomy within their own domains. Seen from the bottom, such systems often imposed tyranny on ordinary people. Seen from the top, however, they lacked capacity; the intermediaries supplied resources to rulers, but they also set stringent limits to rulers’ ability to govern or transform the world within their presumed jurisdictions. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 182

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Tilly’s indirect-rule concept with its core paradox: tyranny from below, limited capacity from above.
• XREF: Useful for the reader’s regime test: indirect rule means the capacity axis in figure 2.1 measures central leverage, not lived rule—relevant to what constitutional absorption can and cannot channel. — connects to: Local township militancy arose indigenously before the ANC organized it — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 607; Imperial capitalism governed by dispersing local power under distant authority; Pre-modern states worked as mechanical blocs of semi-autonomous social groups with dual power (+4 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 182

Broader Connections

• Pre-modern states worked as mechanical blocs of semi-autonomous social groups with dual power #corroborates (0.80)
• Indirect rule made customary law into an administrative tool of colonial control #exemplifies (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 70
• Imperial capitalism governed by dispersing local power under distant authority #expands (0.75)
• The Protectorate’s clan system and homogeneity made cheap indirect-style rule possible #exemplifies (0.75)
• Rule by decree dominates empires efficiently by withholding information and overriding local autonomy #complicates (0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 621
• Pre-modern societies tolerated layered loyalties that sovereign states suppress #expands (0.72) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 874