"It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it"
About this Quote
Imperial swagger collapses into administrative panic in a single line. Walpole, a connoisseur of political farce, nails the antique truth that victory is the simple part; meaning, governance, and legitimacy are the real siege. The sentence is built like a trap: "conquer" promises clarity, a clean verb with a tidy endpoint. "Know what to do with it" opens into a morass of responsibility, cost, and unintended consequences. The humor is dry because the punchline is policy.
Walpole is writing in an 18th-century Britain drunk on expansion yet chronically uneasy about what expansion demands. His era sees the machinery of empire accelerating - military success in the Seven Years' War, new territories, new populations, new resentments - alongside domestic anxiety about corruption, overreach, and the moral bookkeeping of power. In that context, the quote works as a quiet indictment of conquest as a form of avoidance: you can take something without understanding it, and for a while the taking itself passes for competence.
The subtext is also psychological. Conquest is a narrative act: it produces a story where the conqueror is decisive and heroic. "What to do with it" is an ethical and practical question that resists story: How do you rule without brutality? Integrate without erasing? Pay for what you've grabbed? Walpole's line punctures the romance of domination by revealing its sequel - the boring, brutal, expensive part everyone tries to skip.
Walpole is writing in an 18th-century Britain drunk on expansion yet chronically uneasy about what expansion demands. His era sees the machinery of empire accelerating - military success in the Seven Years' War, new territories, new populations, new resentments - alongside domestic anxiety about corruption, overreach, and the moral bookkeeping of power. In that context, the quote works as a quiet indictment of conquest as a form of avoidance: you can take something without understanding it, and for a while the taking itself passes for competence.
The subtext is also psychological. Conquest is a narrative act: it produces a story where the conqueror is decisive and heroic. "What to do with it" is an ethical and practical question that resists story: How do you rule without brutality? Integrate without erasing? Pay for what you've grabbed? Walpole's line punctures the romance of domination by revealing its sequel - the boring, brutal, expensive part everyone tries to skip.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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