The Manchus' willingness to impose the queue and their dress style on the men of China was viewed as an example to emulate by some foreign observers. H. E. M. James, a British civil servant in India, wrote in 1887 that the British ought to act in a similarly decisive way when imposing their will in India. In his view, the British administration should have outlawed practises such as Sati much earlier than 1829, which James ascribed to a British unwillingness to challenge long-held Indian traditions, no matter how detrimental they were to the country.