Yet Roume's emphasis on the civilizing potential of mise en valeur challenges, from the outset, the view that France had one preferred means for uplifting Africans, and raises the general question of what other goals besides material progress the administration in Dakar as- sociated with the term "civilization." It also inevitably revives the age-old debate regarding the extent to which the French conflated civilization with not only mutually beneficial economic develop- ment, but becoming culturally French as well.

Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The …, loc. 250