Unexpected wartime revolts shifted France toward a conservative, distancing republicanism

Evidence

During the war, the Government General discovered that its attempts to engineer social change were not having the anticipated consequences. Instead of the expected loyalty from their subjects, France faced large-scale revolts for the first time since the conquest. In France and the world, the Great War also ushered in new actors, new ideologies, and new fears. These internal and external developments would call many of the liberal aspects of French civilizing rhetoric and policies into question, and encourage a new distancing between colonizer and colonized. In West Africa as in France, a more conservative republicanism would soon show its face. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 490