Colonial military recruitment pushed Africans to rebellion against French rule

Evidence

The breakdown of traditional authority structures, the emergence of urban evolues bitterly resenting the lack of opportunity open to them: this, Van Vollenhoven summed up, was already the situation on the eve of World War I. “Imagine, then, the anguish of a population that, for three centuries now, has served as a ‘reservoir’! That has never seen its children again, shipped off first to the Americas, then for the conquest of Equatorial Africa, of Madagascar, of Morocco, and finally to Europe.” Colonial recruitment had thus pushed African forbearance to the breaking point; the subsequent revolts made glaringly obvious the fragility of French rule after thirty years of “liberation.” These people, Van Vollenhoven reminded the minister, once were welcoming; now they neither “like us or trust us.” The situation was not yet desperate. But immediate action was necessary to redress the balance in France’s favor. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 645

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Could extend the sacrifice essay - conscription as state violence that drains populations and pushes them to revolt.