Paris officials independently devised an intermediate indigenes d’elite category between subject and citizen.

Evidence

It is interesting to note in conclusion how fully Carde’s outlook here anticipated certain ideas that officials in Paris, on their own, put forward in the late I 92o’s. We have already seen that between I 92 5 and I927 the Conseil Superieur des Colonies and the colonial minister began to have doubts about the worthiness of any African for French citizenship. In debating this issue, however, the Conseil also recognized that it would not do to ignore completely the aspirations of “deserving subjects.” To keep them “in the humiliating and materially disadvantageous conditions” of serfs was only to invite further revolt. The ideal solution was to create a new legal category between subject and citizen for the majority of “evolved” Africansthat of indigenes d’elite. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 709

Categorization

• XREF: The third legal category mirrors the three-tier citizenship schemes used elsewhere in colonial empires (e.g., Portuguese assimilados) and foreshadows later French Union categories.