A Mission To Civilize: The Republican Idea Of Empire In France And West Africa, 1895-1930

A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930

Review"Conklin brilliantly traces the interconnections and linkages between the three critical sites of political, cultural, and ideological interchange in France's civilizing mission in Africa: the imperial center, the colonial edifice sur place in West Africa, and the Africans themselves. This is scholarship that will eventually provoke a significant change in the way modern French history is conceived, researched, and written." -Julia Clancy-Smith,University of ArizonaThis book addresses a central but often ignored question in the history of modern France and modern colonialism: How did the Third Republic, highly regarded for its professed democratic values, allow itself to be seduced by the insidious and persistent appeal of a