Civilizing mission
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The "civilization mission" (mission civilisatrice in French) was the underlying principle of French colonial rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was influential in the French colonies of Algeria, French West Africa, and Indochina.
The French felt it was their duty to bring Western civilization to supposedly backwards peoples. Rather than merely govern colonial peoples, the French would attempt to Westernize them in accordance with a colonial ideology known as "assimilation". The civilizing mission was initially championed by French Republican political leader Jules Ferry. Equal rights and citizenship were extended to those peoples who adopted French culture, including primary use of the French language in their lives, wearing Western clothes, and conversion to Christianity. Despite granting French citizenship to the residents of the "Four Communes" (Dakar, Saint-Louis, Gorée, and Rufisque), most West Africans did not adopt French culture or Christianity. Following World War I, "association" replaced assimilation as the fundamental tenet of the colonial relationships. It was thought that French culture might exist in association with indigenous societies and that these autonmous colonies might freely associate with France in the French Union.
[edit] See also
- Blaise Diagne
- Colonial Cambodia
- Decolonisation
- French colonial empires
- French Equatorial Africa
- French rule in Algeria
- French Indochina
- February 23, 2005 French law on colonialism (repealed start of 2006)
- French West Africa
- History of Senegal
- La Francophonie
