
A Mission to Civilize
Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930
Alice L. Conklin(Author)
Stanford University Press
Published on 1. December 1997
Book
Hardback
384 pages
978-0-8047-2999-4 (ISBN)
Description
This work addresses a central but often ignored question in the history of modern France and modern colonialism: how did the Third Republic, highly regarded for its professed democratic values, allow itself to be seduced by the insidious and persistent appeal of a civilizing ideology with distinct racist overtones? By focusing on a particular group of colonial officials in a specific setting the governors general of French West Africa from 1895 to 1930 the author argues that the ideal of a special civilizing mission had a decisive impact on colonial policymaking and on the evolution of modern French republicanism generally. French ideas of civilization simultaneously republican, racist, and modern encouraged the governors general in the 1890 s to attack such feudal African institutions as aristocratic rule and slavery in ways that referred back to France s own experience of revolutionary change. Ironically, local administrators in the 1920 s also invoked these same ideas to justify such reactionary policies as the reintroduction of forced labor, arguing that coercion, which inculcated a work ethic in the lazy African, legitimized his loss of freedom.
By constantly invoking the ideas of civilization, colonial policy makers in Dakar and Paris managed to obscure the fundamental contradictions between the rights of man guaranteed in a republican democracy and the forcible acquisition of an empire that violates those rights.
By constantly invoking the ideas of civilization, colonial policy makers in Dakar and Paris managed to obscure the fundamental contradictions between the rights of man guaranteed in a republican democracy and the forcible acquisition of an empire that violates those rights.
Reviews / Votes
'Conklin brilliantly traces the interconnections and linkages between the three critical sites of political, cultural, and ideological interchange in France's civilizing mission in Africa: the imperial center, the colonial edifice'sur place' in West Africa, and the Africans themselves. This is scholarshipthat will eventually provoke a significant change in the way modern French history is conceived, researched, and written.' Julia Clancy-Smith, Universityof ArizonaMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Palo Alto
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
5 maps, notes, bibliography, index
Dimensions
Height: 238 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
726 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8047-2999-4 (9780804729994)
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Schweitzer Classification
Content
The Setting - the Idea of the Civilizing Mission in 1895 and the Creation of the Government General; Public Works and Public Health - Civilization, Technology, and Science (1902-1914); Forging the Republican Sujet - Schools, Courts, and the Attack on Slavery (1902-1908); "En faire des hommes" - William Ponty and the Pursuit of Moral Progress (1908-1914); Revolt and Reaction - World War I and its Consequences (1914-1930); "Democracy" Reinvented - Civilization Through Association (1914-1930); Civilization Through Coercion - Human mise en Valeur in the 1920s.