French governors sincerely believed coercion was legitimate under certain conditions

Evidence

In a section entitled “Action upon the native in view of the development of production,” Carde rejected coercion, only to revalidate it later. His words deserve to be quoted at length, because they illustrate not the crudeness of French justifications of forced labor-indeed, if anything, Carde’s analysis reveals a sophisticated understanding of the limited ends that coercion could usefully serve-but the good-faith belief that certain conditions legitimated coercion. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 799

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The distinction between crudeness and good-faith belief in colonial coercion is a subtle analytical move worth lingering on for understanding how ordinary administrators justified forced labor.