The article examines the management of imperial territories inhabited by natives/ aliens, whose loyalty was in question due to the relatively recent reconciliation. We consider Modern empires in Europe (Russia, Great Britain, France) as complex management structures that shape social systems proportionate in complexity, acting as subjects in the historical arena. The authors go beyond the dualistic comparison, include the French experience in the research field and make an attempt to assess the degree of its influence on the Russians and the British. An attempt is made to answer the question of the essential characteristics of the Russian imperial method of government. We will try to outline the controversy in the ruling circles of Great Britain and Russia regarding the management indirectly through the hierarchy of social relations in the conquered regions in the context of the problem of land use and the development of commodity-money relations in the countryside. For the success of this task, we will try to correlate the situation in British India and Russian Turkestan in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries with the imperial practices of the French in North Africa in relation to the community. This will make it possible to express an opinion regarding certain features of the Russian specifics of the management of national borderlands and the reasons for the difference between Russia and its contemporary colonial empires, represented by Great Britain and France.