Algerian resistance and biological racism pushed France toward a technology-based civilizing mission

Evidence

Several painful experiences acquired in the colonization of Algeria, along with the theory of biological racism and the onset of French industrialization at home, had predisposed the French to alter that ideology between 1830 and r8yo. By 1837, when the scientific commission was formed, the army had met fierce Algerian resistance. French soldiers were also dying from malaria and other tropical diseases. Indeed, in the hostile Algerian environment one of the greatest problems was not only defeating the local populations, but identifying the proper hygienic measures and civil engineering techniques that would make the country healthy and profitable for future settlers. After fifteen years of educational and health care efforts-in which metropolitan schools and medical techniques were adopted in the colony without modification-the French also discovered a stubborn refusal by most of their new subjects to embrace the gifts of Western culture and science so “generously” proffered. These various forms of resistance made new scientific arguments about the inherent inferiority of other races that much more believable. Meanwhile, with the help of modern technology and medicine, it became clear that the white race could adapt to hot climates without intermarriage to acclimatized “natives.” These crosscurrents subdued any residual enthusiasm for offering all of civilization’s achievements to the colonized. Instead, French definitions of what it meant to be civilized began to shift to reflect the latest European accomplishment: the mastery of nature through technology and science. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 86

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A dense causal account: colonial resistance + racism + industrialism converged to redefine ‘civilization’ itself as technological mastery, not Enlightenment universality.
• XREF: connects to: the MOC “The Republic’s Impossible Embrace: How Universalism Turned Algeria from the Future of France into Its Undoing”