Edgar La Selve's Tour
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On concluding his tour, La Selve returned to France and began preparing a new series of presentations on Algeria. But, after some 320 presentations, after speaking directly to tens of thousands of people, many of whom did not know the first thing about Haiti, La Selve must have significantly expanded common knowledge about the country in France in this period. Unfortunately, it was a narrow and sensationalized view of the country. Thus, when Benito Sylvain began his own effort to fight ignorance about Haiti, this was the version he had to contend with. La Selve and Sylvain, as noted, fell into a brutal war of words over who gets to define and speak for Haiti in the first year of La Fraternité's publication.
In addition to propagating a particular view of Haiti, the Pays des nègres tour also stoked French enthusiasm for colonialism. Wherever he went he emphasized the abundant agricultural potential in Haiti, the wealth it had generated as a French colony, and the subsequent poverty since independence. This bolstered the racist view that people of African descent were incapable of exploiting the vast resources in their lands, The "advanced" European states, therefore, had the right, even the responsibility, to take over these lands and develop them. It was no use doing it in Haiti; the people were committed to independence and there were legal restrictions on French operations. But Africa, as the French saw it, was open for business. In this same decade, French control of Africa expanded dramatically, and continued to expand up First World War. La Selve's speaking tour about Haiti helped lay the groundwork for these developments.