Scholar-administrators trained in ethnography shaped French colonial native policy

Evidence

Jules Brevie was governor general from I930 to I936. His commitment to the same policy is all the more telling because he fit the profile of the “ethnographer-administrator” much more than either of his fellow Ecole Coloniale graduates, Carde and Van Vollenhoven. Brevie had had considerable field experience in the Western Sudan and showed an all-consuming interest in native policy while in office. He was enormously well read, and in 1923 published Islamisme contre “naturisme” au Soudan franr;ais: Essai de psychologie politique coloniale. This book, to which Maurice Delafosse wrote the introduction, compared animism to Islam in West Africa. Brevie also knew Levy-Bruhl, and their correspondence can be consulted in ANS, I7 G 327 FM, Correspondance Brevie. One of his final gestures before leaving Dakar was to found the Institut Fran~;ais sur !’Afrique Noire, devoted to the study of African civilization. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1347

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the history of anthropology’s entanglement with colonial administration, e.g. the later scandal over French ethnologist Marcel Griaule’s work in West Africa. — connects to: Napoleon’s 1798 invasion inaugurated the systematic use of scholarly knowledge to serve empire