Railroads were the instrument for welding French West Africa into one unit.

Evidence

As Roume envisaged it, a grand trans- versal railroad would be built as the primary line of French penetra- tion in West Africa. It would extend from the port of Dakar deep into the Sudanese interior and open the Niger Bend to French eco- nomic exploitation. Other lines penetrating inland from the French colonies on the southern littoral, Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Da- homey, would join up with this transversal. The disparate parts of West Africa would then be welded into a coherent political, admin- istrative, and economic unit. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 156

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Reinforces the infrastructure-as-imperial-unification theme common to colonial rail histories.

Related

• Railways symbolized civilization-building in Africa and America but destruction in Europe. (similarity 0.87)
• Railway integration was the centerpiece of French West African federation (similarity 0.86)
• The Dakar-Saint-Louis railroad quickly expanded Senegal’s peanut production and trade (similarity 0.85)
• Railroad completion enabled cotton exports from the West African interior (similarity 0.85)
• Railroads were expected to convert Africans into free wage laborers (similarity 0.84)
• French administrators justified railroads as civilization’s prerequisite for West Africa (similarity 0.84)
• Railroads built for strategy also expanded West African peanut cash-crop production (similarity 0.84)
• French colonial development in West Africa centered on linking interior to coast by rail (similarity 0.84)
• Railroads in Senegal served military conquest before economic benefit (similarity 0.83)
• French peace and railroads fatally disrupted longstanding African social order. (similarity 0.83)
• French steel recession drove lobbying for colonial railroads in West Africa. (similarity 0.83)
• Governor Roume believed railroads actively repopulated and enriched African regions (similarity 0.82)
• French infrastructure-first policy in West Africa reflected ignorance of African conditions. (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial railroad investment failed to advance the federation’s economic development (similarity 0.81)
• Roume’s emphasis on railroads and hygiene derived from French industrial developments after 1850 (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Railroads symbolized new civilization from wilderness in both Africa and America #exemplifies (0.55)