Colonial administrators barred Africans from voluntarily adopting French law

Evidence

It is first incontestable that a native may not, generally speaking, renounce his own customs and place himself of his own free will under French law. The maintenance of custom is not just a favor, which the natives have the right to reject. It is justified by considerations of general interest, which have to do with public order, for the regime regulating property and family are intimately correlated to African social organization. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 421

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Reveals the core contradiction of the civilizing mission: republican universalism was denied precisely in the name of order, forcing Africans to remain under ‘custom’ they could not voluntarily escape — a legally enforced paternalism.
• ADDENDUM: Parallel to how colonial authorities elsewhere framed the preservation of native custom as protective but deployed it to deny rights — resonates with themes of cultural suppression versus preservation studied in other colonial contexts.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 421