Colonial councils of notables never functioned as real instruments of African criticism

Evidence

At no point were the councils of notables permitted to become what Raymond Buell had predicted in 1926 on his visit to West Africa: “When each of the one hundred and fourteen circles of West Africa establishes such a council, the mechanism of criticism may become formidable.” As a result, the old elite, far from “assimilating certain modes of French thinking” and helping to uplift the rest of the population, continued to lose legitimacy in the eyes of their subjects. In this case, as with the evolues, Dakar’s new ideology of promoting progress through association was patently at odds with the social and political realities of the 192o’s. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 720

Categorization

• QUESTION: Interesting that French administrators refused to let African assemblies become critical — a direct demonstration of the contradiction between republican rhetoric and imperial control worth tracing further in this book.