A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France

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A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930
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This book 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 â€œcivilizingâ€ ideology with distinct racist overtones? By focusing on a particular group of colonial officials in a specific settingâ€•the governors general of French West Africa from 1895 to 1930â€•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 civilizationâ€•simultaneously republican, racist, and modernâ€•encouraged the governors general in the 1890â€™s to attack such â€œfeudalâ€ African institutions as aristocratic rule and slavery in ways that referred back to Franceâ€™s own experience of revolutionary change. Ironically, local administrators in the 1920â€™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 â€œlazyâ€ African, legitimized his loss of freedom. By constantly invoking the ideas of â€œcivilization,â€ colonial policy makers in Dakar and Paris managed to obscure the fundamental contradictions between â€œthe rights of manâ€ guaranteed in a republican democracy and the forcible acquisition of an empire that violates those rights. In probing the â€œrepublicanâ€ dimension of French colonization in West Africa, this book also sheds new light on the evolution of the Third Republic between 1895 and 1930. One of the authorâ€™s principal arguments is that the idea of a civilized mission underwent dramatic changes, due to ideological, political, and economic transformations occurring simultaneously in France and its colonies. For example, revolts in West Africa as well as a more conservative climate in the metropole after World War I produced in the governors general a new respect for â€œfeudalâ€ chiefs, whom the French once despised but now reinstated as a means of control. This discovery of an African â€œtraditionâ€ in turn reinforced a reassertion of traditional values in France as the Third Republic struggled to recapture the world it had â€œlostâ€ at Verdun.
Country USA
Brand Stanford University Press
Manufacturer Stanford University Press
Binding Paperback
ReleaseDate 1997-01-01
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780804740128

Country	USA
Brand	Stanford University Press
Manufacturer	Stanford University Press
Binding	Paperback
ReleaseDate	1997-01-01
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780804740128

A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930

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