Roume’s emphasis on railroads and hygiene derived from French industrial developments after 1850

Evidence

If the belief that opening up Africa to trade was an act of civilization was widespread in nineteenth-century France, the particular means that Roume stressed to effect this end-railroads and hygiene-can nevertheless be traced to a specific combination of industrial, scientific, and social developments in France after r8so. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 198