Practical necessity reinforced an inclination to conserve. The great waves of expansion in the late nineteenth century in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific left the British with many new territories to administer and with only limited resources with which to construct an administration. It was therefore natural and inevitable that they should have co-opted such indigenous hierarchies as seemed to be to hand. In the bleak times of the 1920s or the 1930s there seemed to be little alternative to continuing these policies. The same principle applied in the mandated territories of the Middle East, where local partners in rule had urgently to be found to sustain a limited British presence intended merely to maintain certain strategic interests. In India the Raj was on the defensive after 1857, seeking to rebuild bridges with the elites that had apparently turned against it and later trying to enlist their support against nationalism.