Indirect rule

Indirect rule was a system of governance used by the British and French to control parts of their colonial empires, particularly in Africa and Asia, through pre-existing indigenous power structures.

Quotes

• The white power structure rules the black community through local blacks who are responsive to the white leaders, the downtown, white machine, not to the black populace. These black politicians do not exercise effective power. They cannot be relied upon to make forceful demands in behalf of their black constituents, and they become no more than puppets.
  • Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967), p. 10

• Thus, when one talks of a “Negro Establishment” in most places in this country, one is talking of an Establishment resting on a white power base; of handpicked blacks whom that base projects as showpieces out front. These black “leaders” are, then, only as powerful as their white kingmakers will permit them to be.
  • Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967), p. 10

See also

• Black capitalism
• Colonialism