French colonial development policy fused fiscal self-interest with civilizing ideology.

Evidence

These quotations prove that the federal government not only believed that it had a civilizing mission in West Africa, but also accepted that at least one part of its humanitarian mission was to bring the fruits of modern prosperity to West Africa, through a transfer of technology and Western medical practices and an increase in trade. This finding, in turn, immediately invites a second conclusion: the kind of economic activity that Roume was promoting as essential to African progress was indistinguishable from the policy of mise en valeur upon which the recently reorganized Government General had just embarked. The Government General had been reformed by Roume to exploit rationally African raw materials, in exchange for greater African consumption of French manufactured goods. The best means to this end, it had determined, were a communications network and the improvement of health conditions in the federation. Both policies would ensure the increase in trade upon which the federal budget depended for the bulk of its revenues. At the same time, they would directly profit Africans as well and thus constituted an aspect of France’s mission overseas. The new federal administration’s ideology, in short, made a virtue out of a program of economic development; the interests of the Government General and those of African producers were one and the same. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 188

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Defines mise en valeur as the French colonial policy of rationally exploiting African raw materials in exchange for consuming French manufactures.
• XREF: Connects to the user’s stated reading purpose: the forced imposition of French republican ideas onto West Africa through an economic program that manufactured a convergence of French and African interests.

Related

• French colonial humanitarian rhetoric fused with the fiscal needs of economic exploitation (similarity 0.95)
• The civilizing mission was indistinguishable from economic exploitation policy. (similarity 0.90)
• Colonial officials framed economic exploitation as a form of civilizing mission (similarity 0.89)
• French infrastructure policy conflated colonial self-interest with African benefit (similarity 0.87)
• Moral-civilizing doctrine mattered more than economic in French colonial policy. (similarity 0.86)
• French imperial ideology stemmed from colonial fiscal interests plus Enlightenment ideas. (similarity 0.85)
• French colonialism in West Africa operated through an internally coherent civilizing logic. (similarity 0.85)
• France’s postwar colonial policy fixed West Africa as a raw-materials producer (similarity 0.84)
• The mission civilisatrice was largely a lie according to West African critics (similarity 0.84)
• The civilizing mission ideology constrained what French colonial governors could actually do. (similarity 0.83)
• French colonial ideology shifted in step with metropolitan political changes. (similarity 0.83)
• Colonial fiscal autonomy let Dakar pursue infrastructure that primarily served French economic interests (similarity 0.83)
• France federated its West African colonies to decentralize rule and rationalize economic development (similarity 0.83)
• French colonial development rhetoric failed economically in West Africa (similarity 0.83)
• French colonial medical policy subordinated African health care to economic development (similarity 0.83)