Whether France was assimilationist or associationist has been a recur- rent debate in French colonial historiography. The debate is to some extent a useless one, since most students of the subject agree that from the end of the nineteenth century on, France was both. The more interesting questions are, in what context and for what reasons was one of these tendencies dom- inant?

Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The …, loc. 1283