France’s pro-chief policy change served hegemony, not genuine cultural interest

Evidence

Yet, although this discovery of “authentic” African civilizations by the minister of colonies and the Ecole Coloniale was promising, too much should not be made of it. Like the colonial administration’s sudden postwar realization that France should allow Africans to participate in their own government, its favorable reassessment of traditional African political institutions occurred only after Dakar and Paris had determined that returning the chiefs to relative authority was in France’s best interest. The war had exposed the need for chiefly collaboration and better contact with the majority of their subjects. By now maintaining that chiefs were both more representative and less exploitative than had earlier been believed, the administration could appoint the same African aristocrats to office that it had earlier condemned, and still claim to be respecting its traditional commitment to the African masses. The timing of France’s change of heart on this point suggests the need for maintaining French hegemony, not a genuine interest in the precolonial institutions of West Africa. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 691

Categorization

• XREF: Directly advances the reader’s stated purpose on how republican ideals were instrumentalized in West Africa; parallels ideology-versus-interest patterns seen in Milgrom and the Frankfurt School analyses.