France was simultaneously assimilationist and associationist as colonial doctrine

Evidence

Whether France was assimilationist or associationist has been a recurrent debate in French colonial historiography. The debate is to some extent a useless one, since most students of the subject agree that from the end of the nineteenth century on, France was both. The more interesting questions are, in what context and for what reasons was one of these tendencies dominant? And, when one tendency did dominate, what did the term mean to those policy makers wielding it, and how did the doctrine affect their actions? — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1283

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that assimilation and association are not rival doctrines but coexisting tendencies whose dominance shifts by context.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1283
• XREF: connects to: Creole emerged because French had not yet achieved normative unity at conquest — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 508; the MOC “The Republic’s Impossible Embrace: How Universalism Turned Algeria from the Future of France into Its Undoing”