French colonial humanitarian rhetoric fused with the fiscal needs of economic exploitation

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

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s central question about French republicanism being imposed on West Africa: shows how ‘civilizing mission’ doctrine was repurposed to justify mise en valeur extraction. Connects to chapter 1’s framing of the mission civilisatrice.
• DEFINE: Begins to define mise en valeur as rational exploitation of raw materials in exchange for consumption of French goods.