French civilizing ideology proved internally contradictory about respecting native custom

Evidence

It is ironic that, in the same passage in which he warned against interfering in customary property relations upon which African social organization rested, the governor general also spoke of the exceptions that must be made when customs conflicted with civilization-not realizing, or perhaps preferring to ignore, the inconsistency of such a position. If civil law could not be changed without raising the threat of anarchy, might not the attenuation of customs contrary to civilization produce the same undesirable result? This possibility did not apparently occur to Dakar or, at any rate, affect its actions. If the first part of the 1912 reform insisted on the need to respect ethnic identities and customs, the rest of the decree revealed that, when customs were deemed contrary to civilization, Panty was ready to graft Western principles of justice upon African law regardless of the consequences. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 425

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated goal: shows how republican ‘civilizing’ ideology self-contradicted over colonial justice, a tension recurring in the French West Africa story. — connects to: the MOC “The Republic’s Impossible Embrace: How Universalism Turned Algeria from the Future of France into Its Undoing”