Centuries of colonial recruitment as a human reservoir pushed West Africans to revolt

Evidence

The breakdown of traditional authority structures, the emergence of urban evolues bitterly resenting the lack of opportunity open to them: this, Van Vollenhoven summed up, was already the situation on the eve of World War I. “Imagine, then, the anguish of a population that, for three centuries now, has served as a ‘reservoir’! That has never seen its children again, shipped off first to the Americas, then for the conquest of Equatorial Africa, of Madagascar, of Morocco, and finally to Europe.” Colonial recruitment had thus pushed African forbearance to the breaking point; the subsequent revolts made glaringly obvious the fragility of French rule after thirty years of “liberation.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 645

Categorization

• XREF: Directly addresses the reader’s stated interest in French republican ideas being forced onto West Africa and their ramifications — the revolts as consequence.