African conscription in WWI triggered racialized backlash in Dakar

Evidence

World War I marked a watershed in the history of the Government General. The decision to conscript Africans helped trigger a pattern of confrontation and reaction between colonizer and colonized that continued throughout the postwar decade. Part and parcel of this reaction was a more racialized perception of Africans in Dakar, which metropolitan concerns with national regeneration after the trauma of world war further encouraged. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 601

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s goal: WWI conscription as the hinge that produced a more sharply racialized colonial order.