French colonial administrators studied local peoples for career and practical motives

Evidence

Determining how interested French administrators were generally in the peoples they were ruling is no easy task. Sibeud has shown that many French administrators in sub-Saharan Africa were motivated to study local peoples under their authority for practical reasons as well as a desire to establish themselves professionally by publishing their research in France in the most prestigious social science journals of their day (“La naissance de l’ethnographie africaniste,” pp. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1097