Colonial fiscal autonomy let Dakar pursue infrastructure that primarily served French economic interests

Evidence

Such a belief was not new; what was new was the manner in which this mutually beneficial development was to take place. Railroads and modern prophylaxis against tropical diseases, Dakar insisted, were the crucial means to the desired end of a better life for Africans. This choice of means can be accounted for in a variety of ways. First, building lines of communication and making the federation healthier dovetailed with the immediate interests of the reorganized federal government, whose raison d’etre was rational economic utilization of the colony’s resources, principally through development of modern infrastructure. Indeed, so neatly did it tie in with Dakar’s interests, this particular tenet blinded the French to the fact that not all development was equally beneficial to colonizer and colonized. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 135

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that this ‘blinded the French’ to unequal benefit invites later examination of which specific developments were argued to benefit Africans and how that rhetoric was deployed.