Civilian rule enabled far deeper intervention in African life than military conquest

Evidence

This is not to say that the French military administration, or the two governors general who had preceded Roume in West Africa, had failed to take France’s civilizing mission seriously or had neglected to initiate measures deemed consistent with this ideology. On the contrary, the best military leaders assumed “that French rule would eventually mean the extension to Africa of the secrets of France’s own prosperity and confidence: economic development, increasing wealth, education which would permit mastery of even the African environment.” As military conquerors, they nevertheless had even fewer resources at their disposal to effect these progressive ideals than their civilian successors. Whatever ambitions these leaders might have harbored for uplifting Africans, the day-to-day realities of maintaining control inhibited intervention in African customs, or the formulation of grandiose plans for transforming the physical and social landscape. The Government General under Roume, now organized into an autonomous organ of administration, did not feel similarly constrained. The very point of civilian rule, Roume’s speeches suggested, was to ensure that the civilization that military rulers might well have dreamed of-and to which their own actions had contributed by securing peace and order in the interior-would now take place. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 180

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the argument that stable control paradoxically enables more pervasive social engineering - similar to how post-conquest order facilitated colonial reform in other contexts.