every day I discover a new stupid thing about the British Empire

Empire is easier to understand if you imagine the official mind as a shit middle manager overpromoted to regional HQ who feels like the gold name tag gives him authority to be a dick, as opposed to a moustache-twirling villain setting out to emiserate people deliberately at every step

This really struck me when I first read about Roald Dahl being sent out to run the whole of Shell in East Africa simply by dint of being a bit posh, and then automatically being given command of a unit of native troops when war broke out, despite having no qualifications to do either.

There is a vital extent to which "the nearest white man is in charge" was a rule of Imperial power, which is not great when, for example, you are in Trinidad and the nearest white man is a Dutch South African.