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• 1 media/Thumb 131.png 2024-11-08T14:07:18-05:00 "The French Influence" 19 Benito Sylvain calls for benevolent French colonialism plain 2024-11-28T11:13:44-05:00 09-10-1890 Translation: France must have felt a great satisfaction when, after the outbreak of the terrible war, she learned of the magnificent explosion of sympathies that had greeted her misfortune around the world. With all due respect to those today who encourage ideas opposed to the traditional courtesy, the legendary kindness of this country toward its guests, this fact constitutes a glaring proof in favour of the causes that most powerfully contributed to the spread of French influence.
  
  No, it was not about military success, it is not to the spirit of conquest that France owes this universal sympathy that it has never stopped enjoying. The thing that ensured it that extraordinary credit from all other peoples, it is the expansive confidence, the intense and penetrating charm that is characteristic of its commerce and its very civilization.
  
  Peoples, like individuals, have a dual purpose on the earth: they must work for their own improvement, and also for the improvement of the conditions of others. They are immediately rewarded for the accomplishment of the former duty by the positive benefits of civilization. As for the latter, although it has no consequence here below, its reward resided in the respect, the love, and the recognition from those to whom they have done the good deed.
  
  Do the European powers want to know the exact measure of the consideration that their civilizing role is worth? They only have to look toward the Black continent. There, they will see savage tribes, guided by their natural instincts, receiving some with fear and mistrust, while they receive others with something verging on veneration. Some think that it it in the interest of Europeans to maintain this fear, in order to turn it into terror if necessary. But it seems to us that by kindness and good treatment at least as good results would be obtained. The recent odyssey of a young African prince, Abdoulaye, confirms this opinion plainly.
  
  So far people have been happy to deny France the colonizing spirit, to make it the exclusive prerogative of people of the Anglo-Saxon race. This, we believe, is a great error. What have the English and the Americans done, for example, in the region where they have gone to impose civilization? They have coldly and systematically exterminated the indigenous races. The French, less cruel—less practical, the Yankees say—have preferred to fuse with them. The progresses of their colonization are slow but sure, and the effects are intense and durable.
  
  Canada and Haiti strikingly bear witness to the persistence with which French customs penetrate, establish and conserve themselves, and leave an indelible imprint on people who were at one time under the dependency of France. Haiti in particular, despite the painful traditions of its historic past, despite the terrible circumstances that, in destroying slavery, violently separated the country from its Motherland, managed to keep the language, the religion, the laws and the love of France.
  
  Inspired by these facts, all those who, like us, hope to see the French influence spread and sustain itself, are bound to point out the perils of this route that the current colonial policies in Europe seem to be following.
  
  France must seek to annex, not materially and by arms, but morally, by the propagation of its language, all of those populations of Africa that are on their way to acquiring civilization by the humanitarian processes of its worthy explorers. Also, we would not hesitate to declare, much more than all of those easy and bloody victories won over savage tribes, we must exalt the effective and invigorating actions of the great and beautiful Association that is working to safeguard for the whole earth that glorious flag of the French language. It is surely a noble goal that the Association Française has proposed for itself, wanting to create powerful links of friendship, of good relations, of civilization between the children of France and their faithful friends spread over the whole surface of the globe. We therefore welcome with a profound and sympathetic hope this work whose success will hasten, indirectly, the triumph of persuasion and kindness over violence and cruelty.
  
  May the French nation not allow itself to be seduced by the vain attraction of ephemeral conquests! Every tribe has traditions that they will not freely renounce. Take Germany, for example: in the last twenty years they have experience a sort of collapse, resulting from the bankruptcy of great intellectual hopes, from the failure of a social and political ideal that was long cherished. Because the military ideal the suddenly glistened in the eyes of the Prussian nation has not come near to what they had dreamed; that which the philosophy of history had promised, constructed for itself, was the conquest of the world by ideas rather than by arms.
  
  Rome and Greece perished, Poland is no more; all peoples can be destroyed. But that which is imperishable is the renown and glory acquired by contributing to the intellectual and more improvement of humankind.
  
  Benito Sylvain
  
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