The French, naturally, did not see their conquest in such base terms as control and domination. Rather, as the quote from Napoleon's manifesto suggests, their goal was to restore Egypt to its glorious past of "great cities" and "wide canals." France would, they thought, save a once-great country from ruin and show the natives what they once were and could become again under French tutelage. This paternalistic logic became more developed as the European colonial mission grew; Rudyard Kipling immortalized it in his 1899 poem "The White Man's Burden." Its French variant, mission civilisatrice, was used to great success to win domestic consent for colonial conquests in a nation founded on the ideas of liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, and fraternity).

DEFINE: Explains mission civilisatrice as the French colonial justification rooted in paternalistic rescue rhetoric. XREF: Connects to Kipling's 'The White Man's Burden' and the broader pattern of colonial ideology across European empires.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 115