Colonialism and Human Rights, A Contradiction in Terms? The Case of France and West Africa, 1895–1914

Abstract

Colonialism and Human Rights, A Contradiction in Terms? The Case of France and West Africa, 1895–1914 Alice L. Conklin Alice L. Conklin assistant professor of history University of Rochester Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Where she teaches modern French and European history and the history of Western expansion. She is the author of A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (1997), as well as essays on colonialism and gender, colonial ethnography, and the teaching of imperialism. She is now at work on a new book tentatively titled “In the Museum of Man: Ethnographic Liberalism in Interwar France.” This is an interdisciplinary project on race, culture, and politics that examines how the possession of a colonial empire in Africa influenced the academic discipline of ethnography and the larger discourse on difference—particularly on the Left—in France during the late Third Republic. It will show how the opening of the Museum of Man in 1937 marked a “new” image of Africa that celebrated how different Africans were from the “French race” (to use the language of the time), even as it underlined what all “men” had in common. Conklin is also currently co-editing a reader (forthcoming) on imperialism for classroom use. Author Notes The American Historical Review, Volume 103, Issue 2, April 1998, Pages 419–442, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/103.2.419 Published: 01 April 1998