What was ‘indirect rule’ and how did it contribute to racialisation?
Indirect rule refers to a political doctrine premised on the belief – truism even at the time – that Europeans and Africans fundamentally differ, notably culturally; hence, the promulgation of the necessity for Africans to be rules through the Africans’ own institutions. Yet, while indirect rule inevitably facilitates and encourages differentiation, chiefly through the construction of understandings of modernity through alterity, does it ineludibly promote racialisation?
This essay will explore the features and tenets of indirect rule and assess its contribution to racialisation. It will first look at the emergence of ethnic separation and nativisation. It will then concentrate on the creation of categories of thought and the question of mental malleability. Lastly, it will focus on the imposition of spatial segregation.
Indirect rule hinged on the prescription of novel configurations of identity, specifically racial and ethnic. Not only was Otherness required vertically between the coloniser and colonized, it was also imposed horizontally between distinct tribal and/or ethnic groupings. Pierre, in her 2012 study of postcolonial Ghana and the politics of race, notes that in this configuration, the native was in fact ‘fragmented from a singular subject group; in practice, each ethnic or tribal group was understood to be governed by its own set of rules framed under its specific cultural patterns’ (italics in original). Interestingly, this separation between ‘civil society’ and ‘customary law’ not only participated in racialisation, with the fashioning of an innate delineation between European and native insofar as ‘European/nonnative political, cultural, and civic identity presented itself as a singular racial power controlling the group of natives, the force of this power [diffused] through the various cultural ‘authorities’ of the native tribal groupings’, but also in ethnic and tribal fragmentation. This juxtaposition of ethnicization and racialisation is particular to the native – with Europeans being racialised but not ethnicised – and is one of the driving forces of indirect rule. Indeed, the success of indirect rule lies in the regime’s ability to subject ‘racially unified but ethnically distinct and fragmented’ natives to the management of a black local authority led by a chief, ruling through culture, tradition, and custom. Pierre argues that inherently, the native, as the bottom tier of the colonial order, was ‘key to stabilising indirect rule because it was institutionalised in such a way that it made it difficult to present a collective and effective challenge to the upper tier’. Kanneh (1998) emphasises that ‘the deliberate fragmentation of a colonised people into separate spaces … results in a ‘native’ collectivity which is radically diverse, cultural, and mutually antagonistic’. Pierre posits that the racial character of colonial rule was hidden beneath constructed ethnic or tribal differences, both among tribalized subjects and in official documentation, the ‘ethnicization of racial rule ensured the deployment and maintenance of racial structures of power without an explicitly raced referent’, echoing Mamdani’s (1996) statement that racial dualism was anchored in politically enforced ethnic pluralism.
Further, the parallel between the multiplicity of native identity and customary law is important. Indeed, customary law was not singular; rather while its premise was one of native authority, whereby customary law would align itself to native beliefs and customs and traditions, its reality was a set of laws ‘based on a varied set of customs and practices believed […] by colonial authorities to be customary’. Pierre adds to this point by stressing that the meaning of ‘customary’, the enforcement of customary laws by native authority, and how they were set up against ‘civil society’, all reflect the ‘solid racial structure of colonial power as well as assumptions of the native’s cultural alterity’. Additionally, conversely to civil law, customary law was never written, giving the colonial-sanctioned native authority full interpretations of ‘customs’. Similarly, Mamdani quotes the colonial secretary emphasising that within the ‘locations’ of segregation customary law would hold provided it was not ‘repugnant to the general principles of humanity, recognised throughout the civilised world’, arguing that ‘because the colonial power held itself to be the representative of the ‘civilised’ world and the custodian of ‘general principles of humanity’’, this proclamation, reproduced in some form and extent in every colonial context, ‘[underlines] the legitimacy of its claim to modify and even remake the customary’ (emphasis mine). In fact, he further outlines that both the content of customary law and the ‘legal parameters within which native lives had to be lived’, were sanctioned by the colonial state through the governor general.
That having the final say is colonial authorities’ prerogative suggests that indirect rule, while claiming to be inclusive of the native and attentive to its prior customs and beliefs, in practice, fundamentally conceived of the colonised as an inferior race, requiring help, guidance, and assistance. The dialogue enabled by indirect rule is ironic in its pre-emptive imposing of limitations to the natives’ abilities. Hence, indirect rule was a ‘racial project, established through the racialisation process that constructed the black native – culturally, racially, juridically – against the White European’ (italics in original).
This is made explicit in Lugard’s 1919 report in which he explains native authority. He declares that ‘the policy of the Government was that these chiefs should govern their people, not as independent but as dependent rulers […] The courts administer native law and are presided over by native judges […] Their punishments do not conform to the criminal code, but on the other hand, native law must not be in opposition to the Ordinances of Government […] Their rules of evidence and their procedure are not based on British standards, but their sentences, if manifestly faulty, are subject to revision’ (emphasis mine).
Ironically, those in charge of administrating indirect rule outwardly expressed their desire to preserve native cultural realities but would then uproot tradition and established practice to facilitate order. For instance, Governor Cameron wrote that ‘it is our duty, to do everything in our power to develop the native on lines which will not Westernise him and turn him into a bad imitation of a European’. Yet, Governor Cameron’s major contribution to indirect rule was in his stance on tribes. In response to the problem that while it was believed that ‘every African belonged to a tribe, just as every European belonged to a nation’, thus, ‘each tribe must be considered a distinct unit … each tribe must be under a chief’, many people had no chiefs; Cameron ‘gave chiefless peoples chiefs’, since, if there did not exist a ‘clearly demarcated tribe with a distinct cultural authority, then one had to be created in the interest of order’ (emphasis mine). Mamdani summarises this by writing that ‘tribes are supposed to be in an organised state, each with its own territory, customs, and leadership. But should the opposite be true, it was clearly the duty of officialdom to create order out of chaos and tribal ‘purity’ out of a tribal patchwork’. Consequently, while indirect rule supposedly was an attempt at creating an interactive framework in which the colonised would gain some autonomy, colonizers’ inability to shake their ethnocentric conceptions and expectations, mapping them onto native experiences, skews their ability to embrace otherness, racializing them in ever more insidious ways that become naturalised.
One of the most pervasive and perverse effects of indirect rule was its ability to become naturalised, the Us and Them mindset ingrained. Crowder (1968) succinctly phrases this in saying that ‘for the British the educated African was a gaudy, despised imitator of European ways. For them the ‘real’ African was the peasant or the traditional chief, who unlike the educated African, did not challenge their supremacy. The ‘real’ African had no ambition to enter the world of the British’.
Interestingly, this dichotomy between native and non-native is not only commonly understood or acknowledged; it is commonly accepted. Indeed, Fyfe (1992), a Nigerian scholar, highlights the simplicity of the manifestation of colonial authority in Africa by claiming that ‘white gave orders, black obeyed … it was an easy rule to understand and enforce, and it upheld colonial authority in Africa for about a century’. Yet, he also states that ‘the underlying strength of British racial rule was that its existence was regularly denied … [while] a barrier of race rigidly separated white from black in colonial Africa … [the] separation was never explicitly formulated as port of British colonial policy. There was no need; everyone understood’ (emphasis mine). As such, racialisation during the period of indirect rule was shaped by the cultivating of categories of thought, of specific mental dispositions and understandings. One of Pierre’s (2012) informants stipulates that racial apartheid in practice was not so much formal as it was naturalised; ‘we knew where we could and couldn’t go […] the colonial masters did not have to use force to keep us out of their areas; we learned our place early on in life’. This echoes Fyfe’s (1992) comment that ‘district officers did not have to flourish revolvers to carry on their day-to-day routines. White women did not need a gun to take them to the front of the queue. Their white skin was warrant enough to confer authority and privilege’ (emphasis mine).
As such, while indirect rule promoted ethnic and/or tribal segregation, it also encouraged mental segregation and differentiation that still manifests today. Exemplar of this is Pierre’s collection of testimonies from Ghanian university students. One stresses that ‘[we] tend to treat … Whites … in a much better way than we treat our fellow Ghanians … [Even in the midst of mistrust and the negative perceptions we have of them, I personally believe that … because they are advanced technologically, in education, and things like that – we tend to lean on them more for knowledge and things’. Another claims that ‘because we view them as ‘minigods’, as ‘demigods’, we tend to value them more than our own people’. This echoes Fanon contention that ‘it is evident that what parcels out in the world is … the fact of belonging or not belonging to a given race … the cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich’. Pierre (2012) emphasises however that, despite the prevalent conceptions of White personality and the ideology of Whiteness, ‘this understanding of Whites – of Whiteness – is almost forced, something that has to be accepted by students’. Indeed, no matter how gently, how innocently this form of postcolonialism presents itself, students are not duped by the reality that behind this socially accepted awe of Whiteness and associated prowess, lies the inevitable and undeniable construction, in some respect, of Blackness as its opposite. However, the strength with which mental perceptions of difference were naturalised and accepted, makes the ideal of whiteness difficult to escape (exemplar of this is the case of skin bleaching in Ghana).
Stoler (2002) in her exploration of race and the intimate in colonial rule, interestingly makes note of the heterogeneity of whiteness itself. She affirms the inaccuracy of thinking of colonial cultures as direct translations of European society planted in colonies; instead maintaining the uniqueness of such cultural configurations, ‘homespun creations in which European food, dress, housing, and morality were given new political meaning in specific colonial social orders’, with this interactivity giving rise to new constructions of what it might mean to be European. Yet, it was specifically through racialisation of the colonised that colonisers found common ground to stand on. Stoler advances that ‘colonial racism was more than an aspect of how people classified each other, how they fixed and naturalised the differences between We and They’ insofar as it also influenced how people ‘identified the affinities they shared, how they defined themselves in contexts in which discrepant interests, ethnic and class differences, might otherwise weaken consensus’. Nonetheless, it is worth emphasising the manipulatory nature of European representation and ideals. In fact, colonial regimes played to their strengths in important ways through inaccurate or incomplete representations of Europeans and whiteness. Indeed, Deli, only had a small representation of older children and adolescents, but beyond this, they unevenly represented adult men since ‘when possible, authorities restricted the presence of non-productive men and those who might sully the image of a healthy and ‘vigorous’ race … In Deli, the infirm, the aged, and the insane were quickly sent home’. Moreover, British authorities in 19th century India also ‘institutionalised ‘unseemly’ whites (in orphanages, workhouses, mental asylums, and old-age homes) for much of their lives, out of view of Indians and Europeans alike’. As such, in limiting transparency and upholding the ideal qualities of Whites by hiding its more shameful facets, idealisation is made easier, and white purity is made to be the whole picture. This in turn facilitates potential justifications of superiority and gives grounding to castings of otherness and lowliness. This trope of racial pollution, couched in this mosaic of colonial perfection displayed to the colonised, led to further racialisation. Stoler quotes Beidelman’s assertion that ‘European wives and children created a new and less flexible domestic colonialism exhibiting overconcern with the sexual accessibility or vulnerability of wives and with corresponding notions about the need for spatial and social segregation’. Arguably, this desire for, and imposition of, spatial segregation strengthens mental conceptualisations of racial hierarchy by offering a visual counterpart, serving as a physical reminder of difference.
Ghana, or in colonial times, the Gold Coast, saw nativeness and Europeanness being simultaneously constructed and enforced through spatial segregation. 19th century colonial Accra for instance was divided into three distinct areas: the European town, the European residential area, and the native town. Chiefly, ‘zoning and building codes were strictly enforced to maintain what administrators believed to be a ‘European feel or atmosphere’’ (Pierre, 2012). Further, native areas were established by law as required to be separated from the European residential and commercial areas. Pierre notes that this ‘de jure’ segregation was specific insofar as it was mandatory for European residential areas to be separated from the native ones by at least ‘440 years of clearance through what authorities called ‘building free zones’, zones that stood out as ‘an open space, and … utilised for golf courses, racecourses, cricket and football grounds’. Making green and open spaces the prerogative of Europeans, Bush (1999) suggests, enable spatial segregation to ‘physically [enforce] racial boundaries and [minimises] ‘racial pollution’’. Though blatantly racial in its outcome, this spatial divide was justified not in a language of race but in those of health, hygiene, and sanitation, but also sociocultural preference; with Lugard (1922) insisting that ‘what is aimed for is a segregation of social standards, and not a segregation of races’. Yet, as Pierre contends that, through spatial fragmentation, ‘colonial authorities worked especially hard at maintaining what they considered to be the integrity of the European residential areas and, in the process protecting the integrity of racial Whiteness’ (emphasis mine). Despite the absence of formal, blatant signs forbidding Africans to enter establishments or to be served in them, ‘European-run clubs, bars, hotels, and churches all operated under the color bar and practiced segregation’; a practice often justified, as Bush (1999) underlines, on the ‘basis of the undesirability of too much ‘social intercourse’’. As such, this highlights the mutual interaction that operates between, on the one hand, the physical reality and reminder of spatial segregation, and, on the other, the ingrained and learned mental categories which inflect social practices of both the colonisers and colonised.
To conclude, ethnographic engagement with the regime of indirect rule in Africa reveals racialisation to be one of its primary outcomes. Racialisation in achieved in myriad ways – politically, juridically, culturally, physically, and mentally. Indirect rule, in more subtle, yet potentially more pervasive and insidious ways, not only colonised physical but also mental realities, revealing a fascinating interplay and influence between the different levels on which practices of racialisation manifest. This differentiation based in race still has ramifications in the present day, attesting to the prior entrenchment of mentalities, constantly modulated by law and physical embeddedness.
Bibliography
Pierre, Jemima. 2012. The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mamdani, M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton University Press.
Bayly, Susan. 1999. Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. New York: Cambridge University Press
Piliavsky, Anastasia. 2015. “The Criminal Tribe in India before the British.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57 (2): 323–54.
Stoler, A. L. 2002. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.