Before WWII the muslim brotherhood, circa 1920’s, there was no significant active caliphate restoration planning.
There was no danger of muslims moving into Britain in the 1800’s and subverting the entire nation to submit to islam.
Christianity was still too prevalent; as an example, note the popularity of Charles Spurgeon during that time.
There also was no technology so advanced during the 1800’s that whole cities could be destroyed by a small band of marauders. There was obviously no jet airline travel, so dealing with islamic countries was akin to dealing with barberic natives that had no hope of attacking the home country.
The British militarily in their colonies during the 1800’s simply “carried on”, this management style you speak of was simple and effective during that time in those places, as there was no massive homeland threat as there is today to Western nations.
I agree that the British control of colonies was quite effective in it’s day. IMHO, India benefits from this today in at least one way, as it’s citizens, paired with an excellent educational system, produce great results.
In the post WWI negotiations, the European nations and America made the colossal mistake of even giving muslim leaders a seat at the table. Most of the ruling intelligentsia types who were the brainiacs behind the negotiations for the victorious powers reasoned that rolling off their colonies into new “nations” would allow the transacting of commerce with little puppet leaders put in place. The empires, one can only surmise, thought that they could have the benefit of commerce without the cost, complexity, aggravation and general unsavoriness of having this colonial domination.
The post WWI negotiations, in their birthing of new nations, were way off in their thinking that “people are basically the same all over the world”, and the vastly underestimated the complexity of international relations that would be realized with such enormous political changes happening so quickly. Not to mention that German agents had also used the same tactic they did in WWII, of generating anti-British sentiment in the middle east as a way of diverting British war resources to the colonies. In the post WWI era of the 1920’s the muslim brotherhood sprang up, and anti-Western sentiment has been growing ever since.
No Muslim states got much of a say at all in the Versailles negotiations. That was a huge disappointment to people like Lawrence.
There was no significant decolonization post-WWI, other than in Europe. The non-European possessions of the losers were absorbed by the winners, through direct or indirect rule.
Post-WWI British management was just as effective as before. People like J.B. Glubb and Gertrude Bell kept semi-independent states in order and reasonably quiet. They even managed to suppress the original Al Quaeda, the Ikhwan.
The real problem with WWI was not in the details of colonial administration or colonial breakup, but in the loss of faith by Europeans in God, in their culture, and in their institutions. This cancer took a while to have an effect in the colonial empires. You can also blame this loss of faith for the dreadful post-WWII European immigration and assimilation policies.