Ponty’s governorship systematized France’s civilizing mission across native policy, law, and education
Evidence
Panty’s conception of France’s mission can best be seen in a series of linked initiatives that spanned his career. Immediately upon his arrival in Dakar, Panty reorganized the Government General to give himself a direct role in the formulation of native policy. Shortly afterward, he drafted his famous 1909 circular introducing what hereferred to as the politique des races, which contained the federal government’s first comprehensive statement on the place chiefs should occupy in the French administrative hierarchy. At the same time, the new governor general undertook a major reform of the 1903 legal system. Both reforms occurred against the backdrop of a third priority: spreading French education among Africans. Unlike African health care, which Ponty rarely emphasized in either his speeches or his circulars, instruction was identified as the new administration’s foremost social measure. Adapted education, too, was thus overhauled in this period. These various measures, which were to be applied uniformly throughout the federation, made the overall ideology of Panty’s administration perfectly clear. From his decision to involve Dakar directly in the regulation of native policy, to his attitude toward chiefs and his reform of custom and education, Ponty was driven by a conviction that it was France’s responsibility to direct the emergence of a new social order in West Africa which, without becoming French, would better conform to prevailing French mores. Under his tenure the notion that democratic France had to liberate Africans from oppression and barbaric custom, and teach them French, reached its fullest expression. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 372
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies what the politique des races was: the federal government’s first comprehensive statement on chiefs’ place in French administration.
- QUESTION: What were the specific contents of Ponty’s 1909 politique des races circular, and how did it differ from prior chief policy?