La politique indigène administrators failed by ignoring accelerating urbanization and migration

Evidence

Whereas Panty had tended to view all precolonial African elites as “feudal” and sought to decrease their influence, Clozel idealized the past and failed to take into account the irreversible social and economic changes that had taken place since the French conquest. These included, principally, the movements of rural populations and the growth of urban centers-changes, moreover, that the war was only intensifying and that the interwar period would magnify. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 621