French civilizing efforts shifted from egalitarian emancipation to courting elites

Evidence

What disappeared was a certain commitment to the idea of universal man, everywhere equal in potential and deserving of emancipation. … Yet, compared to the interwar years, there had also been a current of egalitarian sentiment. Although French was still to be taught, barbaric custom to be banished, and medicine distributed, the era of large gestures was receding. Henceforth an important part of French civilizing efforts would be preoccupied with wooing the elite, traditional and modern. In West Africa as in France, an intensifying respect for hierarchy in all its forms-social, sexual, and racial-represented the Third Republic’s true face in the 192o’s. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 741

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reading purpose: the abandonment of universal-man egalitarianism in favor of hierarchy as the Third Republic’s actual face.