The naturalization law proposal may have aimed to strip originaires’ privileges

Evidence

In my analysis, I have emphasized the liberal nature of Roume’s proposal as it affected subjects outside the Four Communes. Other historians, however, have seen in the attempts to introduce a naturalization law to West Africa a ploy by the French administration to challenge the exceptional political privileges of the originaires. Once a naturalization law existed, the argument goes, most originaires would not have been able to satisfy the conditions for naturalization. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1123

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: did the 1912 naturalization law actually disenfranchise assimilated Senegalese, or preserve their privileges? Conklin defers to Chap. 5.