French colonial policy shifted from emancipation to gradual political initiation

Evidence

Yet if association was always embedded in a larger civilizing discourse, the republican idea of the mission civilisatrice had not always invoked the concept of association-at least not in French West Africa. The development of this concept constituted an important shift in French ideology in the I 920’s, compared to the prewar years, when no mention of the term occurred in Dakar. … Nevertheless, the face of tyranny and the means to combat it had changed. In the 192o’s, 11premature” demands for freedom had become civilization’s greatest impediment; its newest obligation, gradual initiation into the modern democratic process through traditional structures and limited concessions to the evolues. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 738

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reading purpose: republican ideas forced into West Africa shift from emancipation to managed gradualism.