Integrationists cast French as the ordering Logos over colonized anarchy

Evidence

France had achieved unparalleled supremacy in the moral, cultural, and social spheres as well. And although Paul Rabinow’s and Gwendolyn Wright’s view of the colonies as laboratories for policies originating in the metropole has shed new light on the history of the Third Republic, their studies have suffered from a conceptual blind spot as well. In focusing on the colonies as an extension of France, they have tended to ignore the impact of the colonized upon French ideas and actions. The colonies were never just laboratories; they were sites, however unequal, of conflict and negotiation between colonizer and colonized, where French assumptions about the ability of Africans to evolve, and of France to civilize them, were contested and periodically reshaped. … Indeed, in the French-African encounter, ideas and cultural practices did more than simply emanate from the metropole. The empire also had an impact upon the culture of metropolitan France. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 33 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Soustelle’s integration policy rejected assimilation while promising perpetual French provincehood; Post-independence Arabization made French integrationist dreams seem never realistically possible — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1691; Returning Antilleans signal allegiance through French speech or dialect (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• The colonized seek French refinement as proof they have measured up to the culture #exemplifies (0.75)
• The colonized shaped French imperial ideas rather than merely receiving them #complicates (0.75) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 33
• Antilleans pursue French refinement to prove cultural adequacy to themselves #exemplifies (0.70)
• Returning Antilleans signal allegiance through French speech or dialect #exemplifies (0.65)
• Post-independence Arabization made French integrationist dreams seem never realistically possible #qualifies (0.60) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1691
• France pursued assimilation and association simultaneously in its colonies. #qualifies (0.60)
• French ethnology was founded explicitly to serve colonial control objectives #complicates (0.50)