Kromer opposed the policy of colonial national self-determination

Cromer’s policy against the principle of nationality was the practical rejection of political self-determination for subject peoples. In Said’s account, it belonged to a British imperial order that treated continued rule as settled, regarded native and English intermarriage as undesirable, and joined administrative supervision to the production of knowledge about the East. Oriental studies were not separate from this arrangement: they helped sustain British control as the societies under imperial rule changed.

Policy and Imperial Priorities

Cromer acknowledged that British imperialism appeared undecided between extensive military occupation and the principle of nationality for subject races. Said stresses that this uncertainty was academic rather than practical: Cromer and Britain had chosen against nationality as a basis for rule. The choice was accompanied by two further commitments. The Empire was not to be given up, and intermarriage between native people and English men and women was considered undesirable. Together, these positions mark a policy that preserved imperial possession and social separation rather than treating subject peoples as political equals.

Administration and the Production of Knowledge

The policy formed part of a governing system that relied on a refined and continually renewed knowledge of the Orient. Said connects this system to the influence of Bentham and the Mills on British rule, especially in India, and to the combined legacies of utilitarianism, liberalism, and evangelicalism. These currents favored a strong executive, supported by legal and penal codes, doctrines concerning frontiers and land rents, and an enduring supervisory imperial authority. Knowledge was therefore not an incidental scholarly product: it helped make administration legible and extendable. As traditional societies moved toward modern commercial forms, this machinery was meant to preserve both paternal British control and imperial revenue. The policy against nationality belongs to that continuity: social and economic change did not imply a transfer of political authority. Instead, administrative expertise promised to manage change while keeping supervision in British hands.

Oriental Studies as Imperial Infrastructure

Said reads Lord Curzon’s description of Oriental studies as the Empire’s “necessary furniture” as a revealing image of the relationship between scholarship and rule. The phrase makes imperial knowledge appear like a fixed piece of national equipment, but it also points to the continuing transactions through which English rulers and native populations were assigned and kept in their places. From the time of Sir William Jones, the Orient was both what Britain ruled and what Britain claimed to know. Geography, knowledge, and power thus coincided, with Britain occupying the position of mastery. Curzon’s description of the East as a university in which the scholar never graduates similarly implied the need for a lasting British presence. Oriental studies served the imperial order not only by gathering information but by presenting that presence as necessary and potentially indefinite. Cromer’s rejection of nationality and the institutional cultivation of expertise were complementary: one withheld self-government, while the other supplied knowledge through which continued rule could be administered.

Significance and Limits

The policy illustrates Said’s broader argument that imperial knowledge cannot be detached from the power relations in which it was produced. In this case, a stated hesitation between military occupation and nationality concealed a settled preference against the latter; the governing system could adapt its methods without relinquishing its supervisory authority. Cromer’s position was not presented as an isolated personal doctrine, but as part of a wider imperial consensus in which control, expertise, and the refusal of political equality reinforced one another.