Direct French rule through private agents failed for lack of legitimacy.

Evidence

This was necessary, he went on to explain, because “a society can only progress when it is solidly policed.” Earlier administrations had ignored this fundamental reality. They had often presumed to rule Africans directly through their own agents-the interpreters, guards, and secretaries who staffed the local commandant’s bureaus-because they thought the traditional chiefs were exploitative and despised. This policy, the governor general maintained, while justifiable perhaps in the abstract, was fatally flawed in practice. On the one hand, French administrators were too few to supervise adequately the agents who carried out their demands. On the other, the agents chosen had all too frequently no legitimacy in the eyes of their African subjects. Viewed as interlopers who abused the powers granted them by the colonial administration, these agents had weakened both the authority of Africa’s indigenous ruling class and the prestige of the French in whose name they operated. In the process, they had contributed to the crisis of the war years. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 630

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader pattern of indirect rule across British and other colonial empires where indigenous intermediaries were co-opted for legitimacy.