French colonial merchants wanted the state to finance their private ventures

Evidence

Many members of the Union Coloniale were port merchants with a stake in the smaller commercial enterprises that constituted the backbone of France’s colonial economies in West Africa in the r 89os; these enterprises included, primarily, palm oil and peanut oil operations, rubber plantations, and railroad concessions. These merchants were eager to expand their activities, but did not have the means to finance them alone. One of their basic tenets was that the state should become the financial partner of those private sectors of the economy desiring to undertake overseas projects but unable to raise the necessary capital on their own. This presupposed bringing the conquest to a close. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 147

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how republican France’s economic drive structured colonial exploitation in West Africa.