Roume envisioned a merit-based elite of African citizens amid a subject majority

Evidence

Such a decree, he informed the minister, would create a new situation in which there would be on the one hand, the large majority of natives who are our subjects by right of conquest, or by voluntary submission … on the other hand, an elite of natives who have become, by virtue of a specific legal action, French citizens, in the real and full sense of the term, justifying their ascension in the social hierarchy by their merit and by the services they have rendered, legitimately enjoying all rights that French law confers, by which they will have agreed to be bound … The character of this act is, indeed, to recognize among our African subjects those most worthy and capable, those who are evolved enough to be completely bound by our laws, accept our responsibilities and be in every way our equals. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 353

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames the early French colonial ideal of citizenship as conditional assimilation reserved for a meritorious, ‘evolved’ elite.
• XREF: Relates to the reader’s purpose on republicanism exported to West Africa: this is the republican meritocracy idea being projected onto subject populations.