The early mission civilisatrice carried an egalitarian current that interwar association policy abandoned.

Evidence

Within the various impulses of the mission civilisatrice between 1895 and 1914, racism and pragmatism had, of course, also been amply represented. Yet, compared to the interwar years, there had also been a current of egalitarian sentiment. Although French was still to be taught, barbaric custom to be banished, and medicine distributed, the era of large gestures was receding. Henceforth an important part of French civilizing efforts would be preoccupied with wooing the elite, traditional and modern. In West Africa as in France, an intensifying respect for hierarchy in all its forms-social, sexual, and racial-represented the Third Republic’s true face in the 192o’s. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 741

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that West African hierarchy mirrored French domestic hierarchy echoes the earlier book note (this reader’s own project), suggesting domestic French authoritarianism and colonial racial hierarchy grew together.