French officials condemned educated Africans as unruly products of assimilation

Evidence

The failure of the policy of assimilation became flagrant the day we noticed, among those natives trained in our schools and abruptly separated from their environment, a different frame of mind and a marked tendency to elude the discipline, which an evolved society has the right to expect of its members. Undoubtedly, in West Africa, some elite subjects have avoided the normal consequences of this kind of displacement, but the aspirations of the majority are directed toward different objectives from those that the colonizer intended for them, in their own best interest, of course. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 574

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows what colonial officials meant by ‘the failure of assimilation’ — educated elites developing their own aspirations.
• XREF: Echoes a recurring theme in the reader’s library: colonized elites educated by the metropole turn the tools against their makers (cf. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Things Fall Apart).