Roume justified dismantling African chiefdoms because rule by force clashed with republican democratic principles.

Evidence

Like his military predecessors, Roume accepted that these chiefs ruled by force rather than by popular consent. Such rule by force clashed with the democratic principles from which the Third Republic derived its own legitimacy, and therefore had to be attenuated. As a result of Roume’s instructions, the protectorate system-or what was left of it-underwent in the early 19oo’s a process of further fragmentation as the rulers were either removed from power or stripped of all real authority. Former states began to be subdivided into provinces or cantons of uniform size. The administration then often appointed “new men”-from outside the families in which power had traditionally been vested-as canton chiefs to carry out the bulk of French administrative demands. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 387

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how a self-styled democratic republic justified its colonial dismantling of indigenous institutions by declaring them undemocratic — rich for an essay on legitimacy rhetoric in empire.