Needing something hands over power
Nothing gives a seller more power over a buyer than finding out the buyer needs what he sells. Whoever shows his dependence loses the ability to set terms. Hiding one's need is part of how bargaining power is kept.
Business
Ruling through local chiefs
A colonial power can govern cheaply by keeping the old local lords in place and working through their ancient authority. The people's taxes still flow to the distant capital, and their laws are still written there. But the chiefs keep their own power to squeeze the people they rule.
The subordinate who really commands
When the official on paper depends on a local chief to keep order, the junior ends up giving the orders to the senior. The senior must treat his helper as a younger brother and wrap every command in polite, inviting terms. A chief's displeasure could spark unrest, so his abuses go unchecked.
Good laws, corrupt administration
Cruelty in a colony can come less from bad laws than from good laws that are badly carried out. The rules on paper may forbid forced labour and seizure, while the officials who apply them look away. That makes the written rules false comfort.
Poverty treated as necessary
A system that profits from cheap labour comes to see the worker's poverty as the proper order of things, not a problem to fix. The farmer stays poor, and the system needs it that way. A tiny daily wage is granted only as payment for work extracted, never as a fair share.
Distant profit counted as virtue
Profits made from brutality far away can pile up comfortably at home, where they are read as proof of the owner's goodness or God's favour. The comfortable trader at home never sees the suffering that pays for his cheap goods. He may even be insulted at hearing of it.
Silence is not a rebuttal
Those who benefit from abuse may choose to leave an accusation unanswered rather than deny it. One official said he could perhaps refute the charges but that it was not in his interest to try. When no single fact is ever disputed, the core charge stands, however much the critic himself is attacked.
Blame the system, not its tools
Brutal local chiefs are symptoms of the larger system that props them up. The real target is the colonial arrangement that profits from and protects them, not the chiefs alone. Overthrowing the cruel chiefs while the system stands would only replace one set of tools with another.