Colonial administrators embraced hygienic reform because they could rule by decree

Evidence

Yet it was not only the proven effectiveness of modern assainissement and the success of bacteriological research overseas generally that caused Dakar to privilege modern hygiene in West Africa. In the newly conquered territories, administrators could also act with a freedom only dreamt of by the hygienists back home, and this freedom, too, made public health activism that much more appealing to the Government General. For thirty years, metropolitan officials had pushed for dramatic changes in public health legislation, with disappointing results. If Roume and Panty were as enthusiastic as they were about the recent discoveries in colonial medicine and preventive hygiene generally, it was in part because they could simply decree the same programs into existence, complete with the means to make the new guidelines effective. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 220

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for an essay: how authoritarian structures in democracies get outsourced to colonies/territories precisely because democratic constraint blocks them at home.