French officials justified forced African labor as beneficial paternal intervention

Evidence

Carde then argued that “this same coercion is no less justified when it is a question of reacting against the native’s lack of foresight, in order to induce him to cultivate crops” from which he could benefit. There had already been numerous examples of “the beneficial effect of our intervention in this direction among peoples” whose inertia “was condemning them to the most precarious existence.” Ivory Coast was a case in point, “where the native today is accumulating considerable profits from cocoa cultivation, to which he has enthusiastically given himself over, but which had to be imposed by force at the outset.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 806

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows the framing logic by which colonial administrators distinguished justified ‘coercion’ from illegitimate ‘forced labor’.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s focus on republicanism’s civilizing mission imposed on West Africa — the tutelary logic applied to labor.