Why did the French abandon the policy of Assimilation?

Answer Details

The French policy of Assimilation aimed at turning Africans in the colonies into black Frenchmen by making them adopt French language, culture, laws and citizenship. The French later abandoned or greatly modified this policy for the following reasons:

1. Cultural resistance of Africans: Africans were deeply attached to their own languages, religion, customs and traditions and refused to abandon them for French culture, so the policy could not succeed on a large scale.
2. Opposition from French businessmen and settlers: French merchants and settlers objected to granting Africans equal status and citizenship, fearing competition and loss of their privileged position.
3. Huge cost and impracticability: assimilating millions of Africans fully into French civilisation, with the schools, resources and administration it required, was too expensive and practically impossible.
4. Fear of political consequences: full assimilation would entitle large numbers of Africans to send representatives to the French Parliament, and the French feared being outnumbered and losing control of their own legislature.
5. Racial prejudice: many French people did not really believe that Africans could ever become the equals of Frenchmen, so they were unwilling to extend genuine equality to the colonised peoples.
6. Vastness of the territories and small assimilated population: the French West African territories were too large and populous, while only a tiny number of Africans (mainly in the Four Communes of Senegal) had been assimilated, showing the policy was unworkable on a wide scale.

For these reasons the French replaced assimilation with the policy of Association, which allowed Africans to retain much of their own culture while co-operating with French rule.