Chiefs collaborated with French rule for wealth and power, not ideology.

Evidence

Dakar’s postwar policy and ideology of association with respect to chiefs did help consolidate French authority in the countryside, although not as completely as Dakar had intended. … However, after 1918, chiefs in West Africa did notrevolt again; instead, they loyally served the colonial administration, for a variety of reasons. First, their defeat during the war convinced them that rebellion would be fruitless. Second, the kind of association that chiefs were being offered differed substantially from that of the evolues. For the chiefs, association meant, not so much the empty “privilege” of sitting on councils in urban areas, or the right to take exams only to be rejected, but the opportunity to accrue real power and wealth as French intermediaries in the countryside. While ostensibly supervised by French administrators, these chiefs would have considerable freedom to act as they chose, as long as they collected the taxes and labor the local commandant demanded. French personnel was too scarce, after the war as before, to exercise any real control over the chiefs. In the interwar years, the French did not hesitate to give chiefs privileged access to new agricultural technology, capital resources, and land in an effort to use them, in keeping with their ideology, to introduce new farming methods in the countryside. Astute chiefs in the service of the French could amass personal fortunes. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 716

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to indirect rule practices in British colonies and the co-optation of traditional elites as intermediaries generally.