French colonialism in West Africa operated through an internally coherent civilizing logic.

Evidence

Colonialism was as much a state of mind as it was a set of coercive practices and system of resource extraction. Those responsible for determining French policy in West Africa behaved according to a certain “civilizing” logic-a twisted logic, perhaps, but one that was internally coherent and made perfect sense to contemporaries. If one does not know the content of France’s civilizing mission or the ways it served to justify French actions, the acquisition, evolution, and endurance of the empire in Africa cannot be fully explained. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 871

Categorization

• APHORISMS: Colonialism as a state of mind, not merely coercion — understanding a system’s self-justifying logic is required to explain its endurance.