Timing made generous Muslim quotas read as coerced improvisation, not concession

Evidence

Better educational opportunities were offered the Muslims through lowering school entry age by five years. Politically, however, Lacoste’s most striking innovation was to decree that fifty per cent of all vacancies in public service should be reserved for Muslims. Ten years previously it would have been hailed by them as a generous and progressive move; but now it seemed tardy, introduced only under F.L.N. pressure, and a hasty improvisation that rather floated in mid-air in that it remained unsupported by what would have appeared as the essential concomitant of equal citizenship rights. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 477

Categorization

• XREF: Speaks to the reader’s interest in how revolutionary pressure changes the perceived meaning of colonial reform — a permutation of the ‘fought back’ dynamic.