Historians had not connected association doctrine to the mission civilisatrice

Evidence

Ever since the publication of Raymond Betts’s Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, r89D-1914, historians have been familiar with the theoretical content of the doctrine of association, as elaborated in France at the end of the nineteenth century. Recently, Gwendolyn Wright has shown how associationist ideas influenced colonial architecture and urban design in French Morocco, Indochina, and Madagascar between 1900 and 1940. Neither account, however, explored the relationship between the idea of association and the ideology of the mission civilisatrice. The example of French West Africa in the 192o’s suggests that the rhetoric and policy of association had an important civilizing dimension from the outset. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 737

Categorization

• XREF: Historiography gap the reader may want to keep in mind: association rhetoric itself carried civilizational assumptions, not just assimilation.
• SEED: Potential article angle: the historiography of ‘association’ as a concept that obscured its own civilizing ideological weight.