Private European enterprises demanded state coercion to secure African labor.

Evidence

Confronted with these impediments to labor recruitment, private enterprises did not hesitate to demand official intervention to secure them the workers they needed to guarantee a return on their investment. It was the administration’s responsibility, they insisted, to reroute the migrant labor away from the British and into the French territories, and to mobilize the underutilized labor of the local inhabitants for their benefit. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 833