Conscripting subjects who feel dispossessed of their land turns them against France

Evidence

Given this refusal of France to commit itself to the education and eventual assimilation of its subjects, Carpot declared, the imposition of military recruitment was out of the question. Moreover, he continued, such a policy would be dangerous, because it ignored fundamental realities about the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. West Africans, he argued, no more wanted obligatory military service than they desired French citizenship. Rightly or wrongly, they felt that France had dispossessed them of the land that was theirs by birthright. It thus made no sense to ask them to defend French national territory. Recruitment in this context could only turn them against France. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 502

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did the feeling of land dispossession documented here translate into actual resistance during WWI conscription — did recruitment indeed turn Africans against France as Carpot predicted?