Republican science faith and fin-de-siecle milieu reform reinforced each other in the colonies

Evidence

As the chief architect of Dakar’s prewar mise en valeur, Roume articulated a view of progress that equated economic development, and more specifically the construction of railroads and the conquest of parasites, with the advent of civilization. However linked to the economic vocation of the Government General, these beliefs also derived from both a traditional republican faith in the uplifting potential of science and technology generally, and more recent fin-de-siecle trends to intervene in both natural and human “milieux” in order to improve the well-being of society as a whole. In the wake of the new medical advances in France, reformers were beginning to insist that greater urban planning and social legislation were necessary not only for moral reasons, but for reasons of greater productivity and rationalization. The opportunity for similar experimentation in the colonies was considerably more extensive, as Roume’s initiatives prove. In the case of the Government General of West Africa, republican faith in scientific progress and the modern interest in improving “milieux” were mutually reinforcing. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 244

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how ‘mise en valeur’ fused economic development, sanitation, and republican ideology into one civilizational claim.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s reading purpose: how French republican ideology was forced onto West Africa via the concept of progress.