French officials blamed African farming methods for low cotton yields

Evidence

The present organization [of native societies], which generally rests upon patriarchy, is particularly resistant to modern concepts of intensive production. The Sudanese farmer is not, in the true sense of the word, a producer. If the export of agricultural products has increased since the reign of la paix fran{:aise, it is because the need to pay his taxes, on the one hand, and the attraction of European merchandise that has been offered to him in most places, on the other, have induced the black man to sell an ever increasing portion of his harvest to the merchant, but without modifying his habits or his way of life. His capacity for work, which is mediocre, has not appreciably increased. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 796

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reveals the colonial justification framework: the civilizing mission’s premise that Africans were not ‘producers’ in the European sense.