Hello, I’m Yang Zhao. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt emphasizes that imperialism built by nation-states contains an absolutely insoluble contradiction. It created a succession of disasters not only for imperial powers but eventually for the entire world.

Consider empires founded on nationalism, such as France.

North Africa was relatively close to France and already under European cultural influence. France imposed its colonial rule most thoroughly in Algeria, yet ultimately fought a war there because it could not grant Algerians the citizenship of the French nation-state. Citizenship would have allowed them to vote within France’s democratic political system.

The situation was glaring. French settlers in Algeria could return to France to vote while ruling over Algerians. Fully applying French law, including voting rights for Algerians, would create a problem: through the ballot, Algerians might overwhelm French political influence.

Under nationalism, national differences cannot truly be erased. This fundamental colonial contradiction had no solution. Every direction became untenable; imperial rule wavered between incompatible choices.

 

Britain eventually found India ungovernable too. Indians had once been fragmented, with little unified Indian or national identity.

British colonizers found India deeply frustrating. The British writer and Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling argued that colonialism brought benefits without harm. Without British rule, he claimed, India would have nothing. Look at what the colonizers brought:

a common language; a railway system linking its geography; a unified, efficient central government; an end to wars among princely states; social civilization and modernization; and foundations for industrial development previously absent from India. All, they said, came from Britain.

The British were therefore angry that Indians showed no gratitude. But Indians saw instead that they lacked a country of their own and demanded one. Once nationalist consciousness emerged, its powerful inner call could not be managed.

Colonialism produced by imperialism thus reached an impasse in both directions, leaving only totalitarian rule.

This was another beginning of totalitarianism: rule could be maintained only through dictatorship.