The mission civilisatrice was largely a lie according to West African critics

Evidence

In contrast to French officials, he intimated that the mission civilisatrice was largely a lie. French West Africa was itself an imaginary political construct; all that remains of the colonial administration are the reams of paper that any bureaucracy generates, and the official memory that the conservation of archives represents. Economically, France linked West Africa to the world market on unequal terms. This linkage and subordination continue, as witness France’s 1995 decision to devalue the franc CFA by half. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 869

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s purpose: an African scholar’s verdict on the republican idea of empire as imposition.