Colonial education aimed to make Africans into useful men, not French citizens

Evidence

Their exposure to metropolitan history and geography, as both the school plan and Moussa et Gi-gla suggest, was deliberately kept to a minimum because they were not destined to be naturalized en masse; rather, it was, in the words of numerous textbooks, to en faire des hommes utiles (to make of them useful men). The suggestion was often discreet, and the phrase never acquired any official status; it did not appear to be consciously chosen, but seemed to be spontaneous usage. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 471

Hardy and Panty now also endowed adapted education with a higher objective and a clearer orientation. This was not, of course, to make black children into adult French citizens. Their exposure to metropolitan history and geography, as both the school plan and Moussa et Gi-gla suggest, was deliberately kept to a minimum because they were not destined to be naturalized en masse; rather, it was, in the words of numerous textbooks, to en faire des hommes utiles (to make of them useful men). … Only “whites know themselves as men [se connaissent en hommes].” Schools, he reiterated to the Council of the Government General, were to make of the African child “a man and a Frenchman, in order to prepare him to become useful, and to want to become useful.” Georges Deherme, who wrote the federation’s slavery report in 1908, used the same formula in discussing the need to eradicate human bondage. France wished to elevate Africans to a higher “humanity,” to evoke in them “more human ambitions … We know that in thus increasing the capacity of Africans to live, we will also increase their capacity to suffer. But it is in this way that they will truly be men.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 471

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the key colonial formula en faire des hommes utiles (to make useful men) as the official purpose of African education.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in republicanism being imposed on West Africa — the refusal of citizenship while demanding usefulness parallels broader colonial questions.
• QUESTION: The ‘increase their capacity to suffer’ line raises the question of how Africans themselves received or resisted this paternalist framing.
• DEEPTHINKING: The passage condenses the paradox — France claiming elevation to humanity while denying citizenship and knowingly increasing suffering — revealing the civilizing mission’s internal contradiction in one dense formulation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 471