France required Africans to prove wholesale cultural detachment for citizenship

Evidence

A circular by Governor General Carde accompanying the local application of the decree explained that naturalization would clearly be misguided if the evolved African was “subjected to influences in his home that were directly opposed to the direction of his evolution.” The applicant had to be monogamous, and he had to have availed himself of the French etat-civil to register his marriage and the birth of his children as they occurred. Such early and continuous use of the etat-civil would indicate “a constant tendency toward our civilization.” Another requirement was that he had provided his children with a French education. Finally, he had to prove that “he had elevated himself above his original milieu,” that “he had sufficiently detached himself from customary institutions to renounce them,” and that “by his mentality, conduct and tendencies, he was worthy of the favor being solicited.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 585

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the operational criteria of the 1932 naturalization decree — monogamy, etat-civil registration, French education, renunciation of customary institutions.
• XREF: Connects to later French policies like the 1946 Loi Lamine Guèye and debates over ‘cultural Frenchness’ as a citizenship bar, and parallels assimilationist tests in other colonial empires.