The British imagined their nation as trustee representing conquered peoples without real representation.

Evidence

The “imperial factor” was expressed politically in the concept that the natives were not only protected but in a way represented by the British, the “Imperial Parliament.” Here the English came very close to the French experiment in empire building, although they never went so far as to give actual representation to subject peoples. Nevertheless, they obviously hoped that the nation as a whole could act as a kind of trustee for its conquered peoples, and it is true that it invariably tried its best to prevent the worst. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 361

Categorization

• XREF: Foreshadows the critique of ‘humanitarian’ and tutelary justifications of empire that later postcolonial theory (Said, Spivak) attacks, and the representational politics central to the Islamophobia field.