French administrators justified limited African power-sharing as necessary for preserving French rule

Evidence

After the war, the Government General increasingly spoke of its obligation to extend gradually democratic rights to selected Africans-in order to associate them in their own administration. … What exactly did Dakar mean by these terms? Its doctrine of association rested on two premises. The first was that some form of sharing power with the old and new elite in West Africa was necessary to preserve French authority. The second was that this power sharing, in the proper doses and surrounded by the proper safeguards, was also in the best interests of its subjects and thus consistent with France’s civilizing mission in West Africa. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 652

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out what ‘association’ actually meant in Dakar’s doctrine — two premises, one about preserving French authority, one about the civilizing mission.