Quinine and improved weapons made tropical conquest cheap enough to revive French expansion

Evidence

The earliest references to France’s mission civilisatrice under the Third Republic came not from politicians but from members of a nascent geographical movement in France. By the 187o’s, the human and financial costs of conquering tropical territories had diminished significantly, thanks to certain technological advances, including the discovery of the prophylactic qualities of quinine and vastly improved weapons; at the same time, interest in new colonial expansion began to revive among a select republican elite in Paris. One measure of this renewed interest was the rather sudden growth of geographical societies, whose explicit aim was to promote the exploration of Africa and Asia as a prelude to commercial penetration and outright annexation. New colonies would help compensate for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, as well as combat French “decadence” in the wake of Sedan and the Paris Commune, by allowing the Republic to engage in the politics of grandeur. The publicists of the geographical movement were not, however, motivated by such pragmatic considerations alone. They also made it clear that colonies were desirable because they would, as one member said, “open up new fields for [France’s] civilizing mission.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 55

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s purpose: republican elites only embraced the civilizing mission once technology removed the human/financial cost barrier — material precondition for an ideological export.