Bacteriological confidence and scarce resources undermined French colonial sanitation

Evidence

Modern bacteriology clearly led the Government General to underestimate the problems of introducing Western concepts of public and personal hygiene into a tropical environment. The colonial governments were also much too short of personnel and funds to carry out the program of urban assainissement and sanitary policing that they outlined on paper. These blind spots and structural constraints compromised what limited efforts were made to ameliorate public health in coastal West Africa before World War I. The policy of eradicating yellow fever and malaria by destroying mosquitoes at their source was ill-suited to rapidly growing cities of mixed population. It was impossible to control standing water inside homes. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 238