Focus on African agency made French colonial rule seem more monolithic than it was.

Evidence

Modern African historiography has been more concerned with recovering the African experience of colonial rule than with analyzing French rationalizations of empire, or considering how colonial policy related to that of metropolitan France. This concern with African agency has made dramatically clear the limits of French hegemony in West Africa and given new visibility to the colonized; yet it has also had the paradoxical effect of making French rule appear more monolithic and unchanging than was actually the case. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 29

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in nuances of how republicanism was forced onto West Africa. Methodological point for the reader’s own framing.