African inclusion demands triggered stricter racial boundary-drawing by French officials

Evidence

Confronted with escalating African demands for inclusion in the French polity, colonial officials imposed surveillance upon the colonized and drew clearer and more restrictive boundaries around who was French and who was African. Citizenship, moreover, was not the only area in which such racial and cultural chauvinism manifested itself in the postwar decade. When colonial officials reassessed French naturalization policies, they now openly condemned interracial unions, recommending instead that French administrators marry white women and start families. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 586