Even Ferry’s critics accepted France’s unique civilizing mission

Evidence

Ferry, addressing Parliament in the early 188o’s, defended France’s seizure of Tonkin and war with China in terms of a special French mission: “We must believe that if Providence deigned to confer upon us a mission by making us masters of the earth, this mission consists not of attempting an impossible fusion of the races but of simply spreading or awakening among the other races the superior notions of which we are the guardians.” Two years later, in I 884, he added that “the superior races have a right vis-a-vis the inferior races … they have a right to civilize them.” Although Ferry’s policies did not go uncontested-both conservatives and the radical left criticized them-neither group questioned Ferry’s claim that France had a unique civilizing mission. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 60

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s project: shows the universality of the mission civilisatrice assumption even among opponents of colonial violence.