<Dd> The condition of a protected dependency is more acceptable to the half civilized races, and more suitable for them than direct dominion . It is cheaper, simpler, less wounding to their self - esteem, gives them more career as public officials, and spares of unnecessary contact with white men . </Dd> <P> The Princely States of India were ruled indirectly . So too was much of the West African holdings . </P> <P> The ideological underpinnings, as well as the practical application, of indirect rule in Kenya and Nigeria is usually traced to the work of Frederick Lugard, the High Commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria from 1899 to 1906 . In the lands of the Sokoto Caliphate, conquered by the British Empire at the turn of the century, Lugard instituted a system whereby external, military, and tax control was operated by the British, while most every other aspect of life was left to local pre-British aristocracies who may have sided with the British during or after their conquest . The theory behind this solution to a very practical problem (a problem referred to as' The Native Problem' by Mahmood Mamdani in his work Citizen and Subject) of domination by a tiny group of foreigners of huge populations is laid out in Lugard's influential work, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa . </P> <P> The largest application of Indirect rule was in British Asia, in hundreds of pre-colonial states, first seen at work under the East India Company's system of subsidiary alliances in the Indian subcontinent . The areas thus brought into the British sphere of influence became known as the Indian Princely States . Subsequently, the same principle was applied in strategic regions on the sea routes to India, especially in the Persian Gulf protected states . </P>

British and french colonial rule in west africa