Inge argues that imperialism contains a fundamental paradox: the more successfully an imperial power governs or controls another people, the more likely its original ambitions are to be frustrated. Attempts to suppress a nationality can strengthen national identity and resistance, while comparatively effective or benevolent government can allow the subject population to grow, organise and eventually demand greater autonomy or independence.

The phrase “nothing fails like success” therefore refers to the unintended consequences of imperial rule. Inge contrasts coercion, which can produce determined nationalism, with government carried out ostensibly for the benefit of the governed, which may create the conditions for eventual self-rule. His wider point is not that empires always collapse immediately, but that durable domination is difficult to reconcile with the development of strong, prosperous and politically conscious subject populations. The quotation is therefore a criticism of imperialism as a lasting political project.

Full quotation

“The illusions of imperialism have been made clearer than ever by the course of modern history. Attempts to destroy a nationality by overthrowing its government, proscribing its language, and maltreating its citizens, are never successful. The experiment has been tried with great thoroughness in Poland; and the Poles are now more of a nation than they were under the oppressive feudal system which existed before the partitions. Our own empire would be a ludicrous failure if it were any part of our ambition to Anglicise other races. The only English parts of the empire were waste lands which we have peopled with our own emigrants. We hauled down the French flag in Canada, with the result that Eastern Canada is now the only flourishing French colony, and the only part of the world where the French race increases rapidly. We have helped the Dutch to multiply with almost equal rapidity in South Africa. We have added several millions to the native population of Egypt, and over a hundred millions to the population of India. Similarly, the Americans have made Cuba for the first time a really Spanish island, by driving out its incompetent Spanish governors and so attracting immigrants from Spain. On the whole, in imperialism nothing fails like success. If the conqueror oppresses his subjects, they will become fanatical patriots, and sooner or later have their revenge; if he treats them well, and 'governs them for their good,' they will multiply faster than their rulers, till they claim their independence. The Englishman now says, 'I am quite content to have it so'; but that is not the old imperialism.”