French colonial ideology traced trade’s civilizing power back to Enlightenment thought

Evidence

The belief that trade would contribute to the civilizing process dated back at least as far as the Enlightenment. … “Trade,” Leroy-Beaulieu had argued in the r88o’s, “will not spread in this part of the world except in those areas where … [the Europeans] open routes of communication … and where, through the example of their own nationals and their own initiative, they teach the natives how to have more needs by working harder and trading more. It has been said with reason that the most characteristic sign of civilization is the multiplicity of needs.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 189

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The Leroy-Beaulieu quotation about needing to ‘teach the natives to have more needs’ parallels the discourse of ‘immodesty’ moral panics as a civilizing lever—colonizers manufacturing desire/need as an instrument of control, akin to how dress reform signaled civilization.
• QUESTION: Leroy-Beaulieu’s ‘multiplicity of needs’ as the sign of civilization is a striking inversion worth unpacking—manufactured desire framed as uplift rather than dependency creation.