Proposals to restore precolonial African institutions ignored irreversible social change since conquest.

Evidence

Clozel’s reorganization would not be implemented. Territorial exchanges between France and England had been periodically advocated before, to no avail. The plan also ignored the vested interests of the Senegalese originaires of the Four Communes. In this last instance, ironically, Clozel’s suggestions met constraints not dissimilar to those that had plagued Panty’s vision of African society, although Clozel’s myopia lay in the opposite direction. 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

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels debates about African institutions and borders that continue in post-independence politics across the continent.