Respecting local customs also served French control over colonial subjects

Evidence

Panty’s emphasis on respecting local customs as part of France’s civilizing mission could, in light of his admission that maintaining such custom was crucial to the preservation of public order, be interpreted as a convenient pretext for not extending the full guarantees of French law to Africans in order to better subjugate them. Aissi, in his study of the legal system in French Equatorial Africa, where the administration of justice was very similar to that introduced in West Africa, has adopted this perspective (“La justice indigene”). Although there is no question that in practice native justice was discriminatory and preserved full powers of repression to colonial authorities, the legal system elaborated by Ponty cannot be said to have been devised with only this end in mind. French actions in West Africa were far too complex to allow the attribution of all policy decisions to economic or political motivations. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1163

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to reader’s interest in French republicanism being imposed on West Africa and the justifications thereof.