Even race-regeneration concern never made French officials question forced labor itself

Evidence

Most striking about Carde’s words is that, for all the ostensible concern with preserving the African race through a policy of respecting custom, no one in Paris or Dakar questioned the appropriateness of inculcating in Africans the disruptive 11law of labor.” At best, the new interest in improving Africans physically led to the regulation of forced labor. It did not cause the French ever to question the policy of forced labor. In the grand scheme of things, 11learning to work” was considered too universal a perquisite of civilization to be withheld from Africans, while the racist belief that Africans were inherently lazy and unable to think for themselves was too ingrained to ever make free labor the only option. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 861