French administrators shifted to power-sharing with chiefs to avert future rebellions.

Evidence

Merlin’s comparison with Britain here suggests how self-conscious the French still were about their own republican mission to free Africans from aristocratic oppression. However, Merlin’s conviction that France now had to consider a “mixed policy” was a departure from the very ideals the governor general celebrated as the essence of French “democratic” actions in West Africa: the preservation of all sovereignty in the hands of the administration. Before the war the question of power sharing had not arisen in Dakar for the simple reason that the African “ruling classes” were considered too barbaric to rule through. Now Dakar was suggesting that it should “respect” them in order to prevent future rebellions. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 663

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s central theme of the republican mission being forced on West Africa and its contradictions; also echoes indirect-rule debates in other colonial contexts (British vs. French approaches).
• ADDENDUM: Directly serves the reader’s stated goal of understanding how French republican ideas were forced onto West Africa and their ramifications.