Madagascar, 1901-1902

Would a soldier, knowing that he had to live in a village, be as quick to burn it? Building a road was often more complicated than firing a cannon at a village. In a new colonial army, patience would be classified as heroism. Gallieni and Lyautey dreamt of new men, who were not merely soldiers but who constituted “above all a collectivity, a reservoir of foremen, leaders, teachers, gardeners, farmers, all ready with no further expense from the metropolis, to be the first cadre of colonial improvement, the first initiators of the races for whom we have the providential mission of opening the industrial, agricultural and economic way and, it must be said, a higher moral life, a fuller life.” In Algeria, Bugeaud had built communities in which civilian life was militarized down to the smallest details; Lyautey proposed the reverse: the civilianization of military life.

-Paul Rabinow, French Modern (1989)