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@tess The British Empire carved up its territories using the 70/25/5 rule: a 70% majority, taxed and worked for profit, plus a 25% minority from another ethnic group, armed with whips/clubs/rifles and enlisted as a middle class and tax collectors, ruled over by a 5% elite of British colonial administrators and soldiers with Gatling guns and artillery (in case of a 25% uprising). The empire then left behind new nations with built-in ethnic strife: a poor 2/3 majority vs. a less-poor 1/3 minority.
@anilmc @tess Worth noting that the British Empire had another mode of operation in areas with population density too low to support tax farming (North America, Australia): kill off or expel the locals and import white settlers. Planter slavery fell out of favour from 1770 onwards, but penal servitude (convict labour in Aus) and push-migration of the urban poor (through the 1950s in pursuit of the White Commonwealth policies of Aus, Canada) filled the labour gap.