French West African political rights were tied to property, service, and loyalty criteria

Evidence

The African subjects who would qualify for admission were functionaries who had served five years (except members of the police and those whose jobs required no special qualifications); canton and province chiefs; merchants who paid the patente and who met the qualifications required for election in the Chambers of Commerce; urban property owners whose property was valued at s,ooo fr.; rural property owners who cultivated their land year round (the amount of land required was to be determined by the lieutenant governors); recipients of the Legion of Honor; and Africans who had rendered exceptional service to France. Eligible voters also had to be over the age of twenty-five, reside within the federation, and have no criminal record. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1327

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the later 1946 ‘loi Lamine Guèye’ debates about French citizenship rights in Africa, and to the property-and-service-based voting restrictions in nineteenth-century British and French representative systems. — connects to: the MOC “The Republic’s Impossible Embrace: How Universalism Turned Algeria from the Future of France into Its Undoing”