Infrastructure obsession blinded Dakar to West Africa’s varied geographical and cultural conditions.

Evidence

One reason for this state of affairs was that the very importance Dakar attached to infrastructure effectively blinded the adminis- tration to the variety of geographical conditions and cultural and demographic barriers, which would also have to be taken into ac- count before a program of rapid mise en valeur could successfully take place. Most of West Africa did not resemble the Senegambian basin, which since the 186o’s had been integrated into the world economy through peanut cultivation. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 230

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

Related

• Faith in infrastructure blinded colonial planners to labor and geography needs (similarity 0.86)
• French infrastructure-first policy in West Africa reflected ignorance of African conditions. (similarity 0.84)
• Colonial fiscal autonomy let Dakar pursue infrastructure that primarily served French economic interests (similarity 0.82)
• French infrastructure policy conflated colonial self-interest with African benefit (similarity 0.82)
• Geography and transportation costs, not just French policy, limited West African export integration. (similarity 0.82)
• Failed colonial policy was blamed on African noncompliance rather than the strategy (similarity 0.81)
• Metropolitan indifference allowed Dakar’s economic doctrine to ossify before 1914 (similarity 0.81)
• West African poverty forced a pooled federal structure to justify colonial costs (similarity 0.80)
• The Dakar-Saint-Louis railroad quickly expanded Senegal’s peanut production and trade (similarity 0.80)
• West Africa’s size and diversity destabilized early French colonial administration. (similarity 0.80)
• World War I drove Dakar from transforming Africans toward respecting precolonial aristocracies. (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial planning suffered from European ignorance masked by scientific pride (similarity 0.79)
• Railroads were the instrument for welding French West Africa into one unit. (similarity 0.79)
• Railroads built for strategy also expanded West African peanut cash-crop production (similarity 0.78)
• French administrators justified railroads as civilization’s prerequisite for West Africa (similarity 0.78)