Expected African gratitude for military service instead discredited the civilizing mission
Evidence
These three entities all naively assumed that France’s African subjects would welcome the chance to serve the country that was bringing civilization into their midst. Conscription of African soldiers and the disruption it caused helped, instead, to discredit Dakar’s conception of its mission civilisatrice as implemented by the Government General. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 495
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
Related
- Forced African conscription discredited France’s civilizing mission in West Africa (similarity 0.93)
- Varying French interests opposed African conscription for political, economic, and administrative reasons. (similarity 0.85)
- African conscription in WWI triggered a more racialized French colonial policy (similarity 0.84)
- WWI conscription discredited French emancipationist policies and revealed defiant African elites (similarity 0.83)
- Postwar French colonial doctrine shifted in response to African resistance. (similarity 0.82)
- French conquest itself drove displaced Africans into new slavery that abolition rhetoric masked. (similarity 0.82)
- Postwar revolts pushed French administrators toward respecting African institutions. (similarity 0.82)
- Socialists, traders, and local administrators all opposed African conscription for different reasons (similarity 0.82)
- French failures in West Africa revived racism and redefined their civilizing mission (similarity 0.82)
- Dakar revised the civilizing mission after admitting its old policies failed (similarity 0.81)
- French conquest itself drove Africans into slavery while France posed as liberator. (similarity 0.81)
- The mission civilisatrice was largely a lie according to West African critics (similarity 0.81)
- Failed prewar policies forced France into a conservative civilizing mission. (similarity 0.81)
- Colonial military recruitment pushed Africans to rebellion against French rule (similarity 0.81)
- The antislavery campaign justified French intervention as deliberately directing Africa’s evolution. (similarity 0.81)