In Rudyard Kipling's novella "The Man Who Would Be King," Dravot and Carnehan behave like the British Empire by trekking about all over India swindling the natives out of money. What's more, after they meet the narrator of the story, they make their way into Kafiristan at the "top right-hand corner of Afghanistan" to, as they declare, become kings. In Kafiristan, they actually do temporarily fulfill their wish.
In Kafiristan, they first begin to establish themselves as rulers by forcing 10 natives with bows and arrows into subordination by use of their guns and resolving a conflict between two villages. Soon enough the villagers begin worshiping them as gods. Dravot and Carnehan also realize that some of the natives they have met practice Freemasonry, yet the tribesmen know nothing of the highest order of the Craft; therefore, Dravot easily convinces them that he is the Grand-Master. Since the tribesmen see Dravot as the Grand-Master and both Dravot and Carnehan as gods, they make Dravot king and Carnehan Commander-in-Chief of their army. In other words, Dravot and Carnehan take advantage of what they see as being the ignorance of a native society in order to make them their subordinates and place themselves in a position of authority, which is the exact same behavior exhibited by British imperialists.
British imperialists conquered native peoples because they believed natives to be inferior. British imperialists made natives their subordinates under the pretext that the imperialists were civilizing the natives when, in reality, all the imperialists were doing was exploiting the natives of their wealth and resources.
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