The Third Republic proclaimed its ideals through monumental industrial architecture.

Evidence

Dakar’s conviction that railroads were one key to civilization also coincided with a marked infatuation by the new Third Republic with the machine and its power to promote progress. At the World Exhibition (r889) in Paris, France’s governing elite sought to proclaim to the rest of the world the achievements of liberalism under the Third Republic. It did so, Deborah Silverman has shown, by building two unquestionably industrial structures of monumental scale: the Gallery of Machines, composed of wrought iron and glass panes, and the Eiffel Tower, made entirely of iron. The purpose of these structures, as their design and the materials of which they were made suggest, was to introduce to France a new public environment that conformed to the dictates of modern science. As such, the exhibition left little doubt about the Third Republic’s commitment to progress through the union of industry and technology and feats of engineering prowess. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 202

Categorization

• XREF: The Eiffel Tower and Gallery of Machines as republican self-image connects to the reader’s interest in how French republican ideals were packaged and exported to West Africa.